Major situatiion, using dban

memory

memory

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Major situation, using dban

My dad's computer just got infected with a virus. I was able to get rid of it but there are still problems. I can not connect to the internet through internet explorer but firefox works. Some programs can not update either.

So I decided to reinstall Windows XP. Instead of using Windows to format the drive, I wanted to make sure everything was gone so I tried dban.

Well I had a little problem getting dban to run using the manual, interactive mode, kept giving me an error. So I tried the auto mode and that may have been a big mistake. See, he has two hard drives, one with Windows and one with all the files. I did not know this but in auto mode, dban automatically starts formatting both drives without giving an option to chose one. As soon as I seen it formatting both drives, I quickly shut down the pc. When I turn it back on and take the dban cd out, I can not boot, of course. Did I just lose everything on the second drive? Man, I sure hope not. If so, any way of getting the files back?
 
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Not sure what to tell you to do now but most likely all you had to do was remove the proxy server settings in the LAN connections area. You should have came here for help first. You can try using a file recovery program to recover your files and then do a fresh install of Windows.
 
What program could I use?

Well I went ahead and installed Windows on the first drive and the second drive is not showing up in Windows. I removed the drive and hooked it up to a usb to sata adapter cable and it still doesn't show up. It installed the drivers for it and it makes that sound when you plug in new hardware but still doesn't show up. I tried on a different computer as well and still nothing.

I am really mad at myself for letting this happen.
 
You can try a program called Recuva. If the drive has been partially formatted then windows won't see it until its been partitioned, formatted and assigned a drive letter. You will have to go into disk management and see whats there.

http://www.piriform.com/recuva
 
I am scanning with Recuva right now. Man that takes a while too scan.

Yeah, I found the drive under disk management and it shows up as unallocated. It is also showing 111gb's on a 120gb drive so that means that the drive is empty according to Windows.
 
Some good news. I was able to get all the files back. I had to use a program called File Scavenger. I am amazed at that program. It found over 107,000 files some dating back to 1986 unless that date was wrong.

The program costs $50 but well worth it. The good thing about it is you can scan with it before you buy it. That way if it doesn't find the files you are looking for, you just don't buy it.
 
Honestly that sounds a bit dodgy. I have used Recuva many times and it's always found what I was looking for (did some work experience at a computer place, always people coming in with accidentally deleted files and such)

But nonetheless you found what you needed.
 
I think why Recuva didn't work is because the drive in question was not recognized by Windows under my computer. It showed up in disk management as unallocated but did not show up under my computer.

It did find a bunch of files on the first drive but most of them I did not recognize.
 
And that is why I had to use a different program. There are some situations that free programs will not do the trick and my situation was one of them.
 
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