XP wiped out my hard drive

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I installed XP Pro last night and it completely wiped out my machine. We have nothing on there now. Is there anyway to go back and get the info we lost. Word, Excel, etc are gone. We have no games and lost all of our documents.

Please tell me there is a way to go back. Thanks for any help you can give me.

Carly
 
brensmommie said:
I installed XP Pro last night and it completely wiped out my machine. We have nothing on there now. Is there anyway to go back and get the info we lost. Word, Excel, etc are gone. We have no games and lost all of our documents.

Please tell me there is a way to go back. Thanks for any help you can give me.

Carly
Click to expand...

This isn't very nice. You apparently chose to install it picking the
options to reformat the machine. Perhaps you didn't see the warning
messages?

After the installation, you were left with Windows XP weren't you?
Can't you reload Word/Excel/etc. from the Office installation CD disks
that you have? Can't you get your files back from the backups you made
before doign the upgrade?
 
I thought i was just upgrading to XP. It stated my previous version on Windows would be backed up in case any programs didn't work, so I could uninstall it if needed and go back to our old version. I knew I should not have done it myself.....

So pretty much if there is nothing there, then there is no way to recover stuff. We did not back everything up before doing this, because I thought I was merely upgrading to a newer version.

Carly

----- Rob Schneider wrote: -----
I installed XP Pro last night and it completely wiped out my machine. We have nothing on there now. Is there anyway to go back and get the info we lost. Word, Excel, etc are gone. We have no games and lost all of our documents.
Click to expand...

This isn't very nice. You apparently chose to install it picking the
options to reformat the machine. Perhaps you didn't see the warning
messages?

After the installation, you were left with Windows XP weren't you?
Can't you reload Word/Excel/etc. from the Office installation CD disks
that you have? Can't you get your files back from the backups you made
before doign the upgrade?
 
Hard way to learn the lesson that no matter WHAT you're going to do on your
computer, ALWAYS back up your important files. In fact, you should be doing
a periodic backup anyway, because you never know what could happen to your
hard drive. New a lady that was having no trouble at all with her computer
until they had a fire in her house. They didn't think the computer had been
damaged, but there was a lot of smoke and soot floating around. As the days
progressed more and more things started failing on her computer, and
eventually the hard drive failed as well. Just because it's okay today
doesn't mean it will be okay tomorrow.


brensmommie said:
I thought i was just upgrading to XP. It stated my previous version on
Click to expand...
Windows would be backed up in case any programs didn't work, so I could
uninstall it if needed and go back to our old version. I knew I should not
have done it myself.....
So pretty much if there is nothing there, then there is no way to recover
Click to expand...
stuff. We did not back everything up before doing this, because I thought I
was merely upgrading to a newer version.
Carly

----- Rob Schneider wrote: -----
Click to expand...
machine. We have nothing on there now. Is there anyway to go back and get
the info we lost. Word, Excel, etc are gone. We have no games and lost all
of our documents.
 
Do yourself a huge favor. Install a second (slave) hard drive on which to
back up your important documents, spreadhseets, photos, etc.

If you shop around, you can get a 40 gig hard drive for $50 after rebates.

Joe

brensmommie said:
I thought i was just upgrading to XP. It stated my previous version on
Click to expand...
Windows would be backed up in case any programs didn't work, so I could
uninstall it if needed and go back to our old version. I knew I should not
have done it myself.....
So pretty much if there is nothing there, then there is no way to recover
Click to expand...
stuff. We did not back everything up before doing this, because I thought I
was merely upgrading to a newer version.
Carly

----- Rob Schneider wrote: -----
Click to expand...
machine. We have nothing on there now. Is there anyway to go back and get
the info we lost. Word, Excel, etc are gone. We have no games and lost all
of our documents.
 
Joe727 said:
Do yourself a huge favor. Install a second (slave) hard drive on
which to back up your important documents, spreadhseets, photos, etc.

If you shop around, you can get a 40 gig hard drive for $50 after
rebates.

Joe
Click to expand...

That may protect against accidental deletes and overwrites but not
fire/theft/spillage/droppage etc..

I FTP my most important personal data files to a protected folder on my
webspace. Then it is not only safe from all the above but I can get to it
from anywhere in the world :-)
 
Tiny said:
That may protect against accidental deletes and overwrites but not
fire/theft/spillage/droppage etc..

I FTP my most important personal data files to a protected folder on
my webspace. Then it is not only safe from all the above but I can
get to it from anywhere in the world :-)
Click to expand...

p.s. I have too many photos to save in my webspace but the Sony Imagestation
website - http://www.imagestation.com - allows unlimited storage and you can
access the original images from your computer, unlike many sites which only
allow you to view reduced quality images online, saving the originals for
printing only.
 
brensmommie said:
I installed XP Pro last night and it completely wiped out my machine. We have nothing on there now. Is there anyway to go back and get the info we lost. Word, Excel, etc are gone. We have no games and lost all of our documents.

Please tell me there is a way to go back. Thanks for any help you can give me.

Carly
Click to expand...

When you upgraded did you pick a new username? It sounds like you had
windows98 with MCR (for example) with no login, and when you installed
XP you chose Mark. In which case your documents should be somewhere on
your PC. Did you do a search for them? Did you go into c:\documents
and settings to see if there are two entries, one (for example) of MCR
and the other for Mark?
 
Tiny Tim said:
That may protect against accidental deletes and overwrites but not
fire/theft/spillage/droppage etc..

I FTP my most important personal data files to a protected folder on my
webspace. Then it is not only safe from all the above but I can get to it
from anywhere in the world :-)
Click to expand...

And I suppose on-line storage is immune from those calamities?

Joe
 
brensmommie said:
I installed XP Pro last night and it completely wiped out my machine. We
Click to expand...
have nothing on there now. Is there anyway to go back and get the info we
lost. Word, Excel, etc are gone. We have no games and lost all of our
documents.
Please tell me there is a way to go back. Thanks for any help you can give me.

Carly
Click to expand...

What did you upgrade from? If you use windows explorer to view the C drive
is there a folder called win98 or win as well as one for winnt? How big is
the hard drive and how much space is used on it? The size of the drive and
the free space available will indicate if it saved anything or formated. Do
a search for *.xls (all excel files) or *.doc (all word files) and see how
many it comes up with - have you re-installed office?
Linda
 
Joe727 said:
And I suppose on-line storage is immune from those calamities?

Joe
Click to expand...

Well it's far less likely that my laptop will catch fire, get dropped or get
stolen *at the same time* that my ISP loses their whole web server. I also
imagine that my ISP has backups of their servers as well. Ditto Sony for
Imagestation. I think that is rather better safety than two hard drives
stuck in one machine. You are familiar with the concept of off-site backup,
I presume. It's also a lot less hassle, to FTP with broadband, than burning
CD-Rs or erasing and reburning CD-RWs.

You're free to adopt your solution, and for speed and convenience it's a
good one, but it is far from secure.
 
<snip>

By the way, another good tip to help avoid accidental data loss, even if you
don't have two drives and don't backup at all, is to at least partition your
drive and put system/program files on C: and data on D:. That way an OS
install will not harm your data. That's another part of my (relatively) pain
free approach to personal computing.
 
Tiny Tim said:
Well it's far less likely that my laptop will catch fire, get dropped or get
stolen *at the same time* that my ISP loses their whole web server.
Click to expand...
<snip>

And exactly how did you arrrive at that conclusion? On what facts did you
base this? What is the business model of the server-based back-up company
you are doing business with? Are they making money? If so, how? What are
their backup protocols? What are their security measures? Have their
servers been hacked? Do you even know if they have?

I don't understand why you jumped all over me when I suggested the OP
install a second hard drive. Respond to the OP's post if you have something
to offer.

BTW, I went to the Sony site you provided the link to. It took 2 minutes to
load on my broadband connection.

Joe
 
Joe727 said:
And exactly how did you arrrive at that conclusion? On what facts
did you base this? What is the business model of the server-based
back-up company you are doing business with? Are they making money?
If so, how? What are their backup protocols? What are their security
measures? Have their servers been hacked? Do you even know if they
have?

I don't understand why you jumped all over me when I suggested the OP
install a second hard drive. Respond to the OP's post if you have
something to offer.

BTW, I went to the Sony site you provided the link to. It took 2
minutes to load on my broadband connection.

Joe
Click to expand...

I think that if you read the thread I did not jump on your post at all. I
merely commented that your idea had its limitations. If that suits you that
is absolutely fine but not everyone thinks about the benefit of off-site
storage. As the point of replying is to help people I thought it would be
sensible to add this caveat.

As for my ISP, I don't know or even care too much whether their servers are
backed up but I reckon it's a pretty fair bet that they are. The point I was
making that if my laptop dies it is most unlikely that my ISP will suffer a
similar fate at the same time. However, the two-disk strategy will be
worthless if the PC catches fire or gets stolen.

You're the one that jumped on *my* post when you challenged that my ISP was
immune from those calamities. I never suggested it was, just that I had
better protection through an off-site copy of my data. I even put a smiley
on my paragraph about FTPing data. I was offering an alternative, not a
contradiction.

This is not supposed to be personal; it's supposed to help people by
offering alternative suggestions. I do not see why you have a problem with
that.

Good bye.
 
Tiny Tim said:
I think that if you read the thread I did not jump on your post at all. I
merely commented that your idea had its limitations. If that suits you that
is absolutely fine but not everyone thinks about the benefit of off-site
storage. As the point of replying is to help people I thought it would be
sensible to add this caveat.

As for my ISP, I don't know or even care too much whether their servers are
backed up but I reckon it's a pretty fair bet that they are. The point I was
making that if my laptop dies it is most unlikely that my ISP will suffer a
similar fate at the same time. However, the two-disk strategy will be
worthless if the PC catches fire or gets stolen.

You're the one that jumped on *my* post when you challenged that my ISP was
immune from those calamities. I never suggested it was, just that I had
better protection through an off-site copy of my data. I even put a smiley
on my paragraph about FTPing data. I was offering an alternative, not a
contradiction.

This is not supposed to be personal; it's supposed to help people by
offering alternative suggestions. I do not see why you have a problem with
that.

Good bye.
Click to expand...

Good bye and good luck with your web-based storage.

Joe
 
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