G
Guest
I need advice.
I help a friend with her WinXP Pro system. Its a P4 2.4 FIC MB system. Has two disks. C disk salvaged from a previous system. Has WinME that barely works and is only kept as reference. will eventually reformat.
second disk has two partitions. I used one partition to load WinXP Pro and all apps. Second partition for data.
system is configure with two OS's. original, barely working WinME and new WinXP.
WinXP System worked find for about one month. Then she called said she got unable to boot corrupt or missing hal.dll file. She tried to reboot and problem went away. System worked find.
Today she got the same message but system won't reboot at all.
Couldn't bring up system. Brough up repair console and tried to find and rebuild boot.ini. didn't work. I looked at system and this is what I found. system32 directory was empty. There were three folders with garbage characters in the name. Couldn't look into them. ran chkdsk found error. tried other things chkdsk, scandsk nothing informative came of it.
current state of system. system 32 directory is gone. there is now a FOUND directory with thousand of found.xxx files.
Question: Am I hosed.
What I beleive happened: Somehow (program error or virus) system32 directory (and possible others) was renamed causing system to fail to boot. I came along and ran chkdsk scandisk and complicated the problem.
First. How do I fix this. Is the system32 data lost or just hidden (in FOund files). If hidden can it be restored.
Second. If I have to reinstall WinXP Pro will i have to reinstall all my apps. Where is the registry kept.
Third. Is there any recovery method to use.
Fourth. other than a full disk backup, how can i protect myself from another system32 crash?.
Any help would be appreciated.
I help a friend with her WinXP Pro system. Its a P4 2.4 FIC MB system. Has two disks. C disk salvaged from a previous system. Has WinME that barely works and is only kept as reference. will eventually reformat.
second disk has two partitions. I used one partition to load WinXP Pro and all apps. Second partition for data.
system is configure with two OS's. original, barely working WinME and new WinXP.
WinXP System worked find for about one month. Then she called said she got unable to boot corrupt or missing hal.dll file. She tried to reboot and problem went away. System worked find.
Today she got the same message but system won't reboot at all.
Couldn't bring up system. Brough up repair console and tried to find and rebuild boot.ini. didn't work. I looked at system and this is what I found. system32 directory was empty. There were three folders with garbage characters in the name. Couldn't look into them. ran chkdsk found error. tried other things chkdsk, scandsk nothing informative came of it.
current state of system. system 32 directory is gone. there is now a FOUND directory with thousand of found.xxx files.
Question: Am I hosed.
What I beleive happened: Somehow (program error or virus) system32 directory (and possible others) was renamed causing system to fail to boot. I came along and ran chkdsk scandisk and complicated the problem.
First. How do I fix this. Is the system32 data lost or just hidden (in FOund files). If hidden can it be restored.
Second. If I have to reinstall WinXP Pro will i have to reinstall all my apps. Where is the registry kept.
Third. Is there any recovery method to use.
Fourth. other than a full disk backup, how can i protect myself from another system32 crash?.
Any help would be appreciated.