XP Issues and Other Such Mysteries

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big_c_snow

New Member
Hey all, I know this is my first post in the forum, but I have a few questions here.

I am running XP Home SP2 on a HP desktop with 768MB RAM. I chose the repair optionfor reinstalling Windows, and after that succeeded I was left with approximately 25GB of space taken on my hard drive, and no way to access it. In My Documents, I am left with a folder called Owner that has a size of 0 bytes, and I cannot access it. I ran a search on my computer, and it is there that I believe my 25GB hides.

Also, on HP desktops, the esc key is supposed to get you into BIOS, right?

And let's pretend that one day, I thought my hard drive died, and I put a laptop HD in as Master and tried to boot from it, yet got the message NTLDR not found. What does this mean?

Thanks for the help!
 
First of all you need a Welcome to the Computer Forum! http://www.computerforum.com/70672-official-welcome-thread.html Please remember to review the http://www.computerforum.com/52038-forum-rules.html

The problem you are reporting after the repair install of Windows suggests the repair somehow deleted your normal logon/adminitrator information and settings. The 25gb not seen seems a little too high for the usual "hidden" partition seen on prebuilt systems where Windows is preinstalled already. For the Owner folder you can try right clicking on it and seeing if the hidden or read only box has a check mark and the properties screen is darkened. Uncheck this and click apply if you are planning to delete it.

For entering the bios setup program most systems show the assigned key to press when first turning the system on. The user manual for that model will indicate which other key if the DEL key isn't used. As far as the ntldr or NT loader files the instructions seen here are frequently recommended.
Windows XP users
  1. Insert the Windows XP bootable CD into the computer.
  2. When prompted to press any key to boot from the CD, press any key.
  3. Once in the Windows XP setup menu press the "R" key to repair Windows.
  4. Log into your Windows installation by pressing the "1" key and pressing enter.
  5. You will then be prompted for your administrator password, enter that password.
  6. Copy the below two files to the root directory of the primary hard disk. In the below example we are copying these files from the CD-ROM drive letter "E". This letter may be different on your computer.

    copy e:\i386\ntldr c:\
    copy e:\i386\ntdetect.com c:\
  7. Once both of these files have been successfully copied, remove the CD from the computer and reboot.
http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000465.htm
 
It's not that it's not found, the 25GB that is taken up was taken when I did teh repair install of Windows. It told me that approximately 25 or so GB was being used out of 51.4GB.

I can rightclick on that folder and disable read-only all day long, but it still tells me Access is Denied, no matter how I try to go about messing with it.

Thanks!
 
PC eye said:
First of all you need a Welcome to the Computer Forum! http://www.computerforum.com/70672-official-welcome-thread.html Please remember to review the http://www.computerforum.com/52038-forum-rules.html

The problem you are reporting after the repair install of Windows suggests the repair somehow deleted your normal logon/adminitrator information and settings. The 25gb not seen seems a little too high for the usual "hidden" partition seen on prebuilt systems where Windows is preinstalled already. For the Owner folder you can try right clicking on it and seeing if the hidden or read only box has a check mark and the properties screen is darkened. Uncheck this and click apply if you are planning to delete it.

For entering the bios setup program most systems show the assigned key to press when first turning the system on. The user manual for that model will indicate which other key if the DEL key isn't used. As far as the ntldr or NT loader files the instructions seen here are frequently recommended.
Windows XP users
  1. Insert the Windows XP bootable CD into the computer.
  2. When prompted to press any key to boot from the CD, press any key.
  3. Once in the Windows XP setup menu press the "R" key to repair Windows.
  4. Log into your Windows installation by pressing the "1" key and pressing enter.
  5. You will then be prompted for your administrator password, enter that password.
  6. Copy the below two files to the root directory of the primary hard disk. In the below example we are copying these files from the CD-ROM drive letter "E". This letter may be different on your computer.

    copy e:\i386\ntldr c:\
    copy e:\i386\ntdetect.com c:\
  7. Once both of these files have been successfully copied, remove the CD from the computer and reboot.
http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000465.htm
Click to expand...

I agree with PC eye... however, it is an HP. And chances are there might be something else happening... I had a similar problem with a system a customer brought me, found out it was the mobo giving her the problem. The system was under the warranty. So, we were good there.

Chances are there might be some other problem(s) if after you did what PC eye suggest and it still doesn't fix the problem.

Just keep an open mind of that possibility.
 
big_c_snow said:
It's not that it's not found, the 25GB that is taken up was taken when I did teh repair install of Windows. It told me that approximately 25 or so GB was being used out of 51.4GB.
Click to expand...
It could happened... although what you said about accessing it means that something is surely wrong!
big_c_snow said:
I can rightclick on that folder and disable read-only all day long, but it still tells me Access is Denied, no matter how I try to go about messing with it.

Thanks!
Click to expand...
Tell me, did you have data stored on this drive?

If not, my suggestion is to reboot the computer and reinstall the OS, but this time don't don the recovery/restore/fix option. Let Windows XP install itself onto the drive. Let it fully load - format and copy... doing it as a new drive. Being that you probably already lost all your data anyways. It will start it back to the beginning so that you can free your system again to move forward.

Tell me if that helps?
 
The XP installer can also be used to delete the current installation without a drive wipe. Slaving the drive in another case or use of a live for cd Linux distro can be used for copying files from an otherwise inaccessible partiition. Have a spare hard drive lying around? Put Windows on long enough to backup files to that one and wipe the primary for a fresh install of XP. Later you simply download the HP updates for the board, sound, video, etc. and you are set to go from there. Plus you have all of your files available on the second drive for retrieval.
 
I'm not familiar with linux distro... but it sounds reasonable enough for me.

PC eye said:
Slaving the drive in another case or use of a live for cd Linux distro can be used for copying files from an otherwise inaccessible partiition.
Click to expand...

Try it out. Or the latter...
 
you may have set that account's files and folder's private so no one could access it except if you login as that account.
 
Buy-it PC said:
I'm not familiar with linux distro... but it sounds reasonable enough for me.



Try it out. Or the latter...
Click to expand...

First you need to get a little familiar with Linux as an OS and then one of it's "countless" open source distributions(distros) like Knoppix live for cd.
Computer First Aid Using Knoppix


By Cedric Shock and Susan Sullivan


These instructions were written using Knoppix version 3.7. It can be downloaded from http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html. This document is available online at http://www.shockfamily.net/cedric/knoppix/. There is also an older version written for Knoppix 3.2. If you need help with these instructions or have corrections or suggestions please direct your communications to cedric
at.jpg
shockfamily.net. Preface: Don't Panic

Windows just crashed. The computer won't boot back up. Those "System Recovery Disks" that came with your computer will erase all of your data. In most cases, when Windows breaks and will not start up again, none of your data has been lost, you just don't have a way to get to it. These instructions are a way of getting to your data when Windows won't work. If these instructions fail to recover your data, don't panic; even in cases of physically damaged drives, reformatted drives, and accidentally deleted files, professional data recovery companies such as Hard Drive Recovery Group typically have a 95 to 98% success rate. These services cost $50 to $2500 depending on the severity of damage to the drive. http://www.shockfamily.net/cedric/knoppix/

Note Knoppix shouldn't be tried on any damaged hard drives.
 
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