For the No Admin Tools problem, I might have a fix for you... Oh...your IT guys are quite incorrect. XP Home does indeed have Administrative Tools (how else are you supposed to look at your hard drive information - other than through Windows Explorer).
I still suggest you download some utilities from the drive manufacturer and check the drive with them. It's pretty rare that a drive suddenly becomes unformatted. It's not like it's going to misremember that it once was used for something. Larry -----Original Message----- From: Computer Guys Discussion List [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Robert Sent: Friday, May 09, 2008 5:54 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [CGUYS] new problem with computer As of now my problem might be solved, described below. Today I went to my IT department, got some advice that was moderately helpful, but mostly to "buy a new computer." I have a Dell XPS that is 4 -- 5 years old, 3.2 GHz. Pentium IV, 1 GB DDRAM, internal SATA drives. They said that Windows XP Home has no Administrative Tools, but I know that I have used it many times. When I came back home, Administrative Tools worked -- nothing that I did -- and it reported the non-bootable internal hard drive that I reformatted as healthy (it had suddenly become unformatted). Then I tried to restore from backup the data lost on that drive, but Driveimage couldn't do it because the drive couldn't be locked. After much frustration, I noticed that Driveimage has an "ignore" button, so clicking on this started an long list of red warning messages that this action is dangerous. Finally, Driveimage restored all the data and everything seemed OK. Then I tried to burn a DVD using ImgBurn and it couldn't because the DVD burner couldn't be locked (the same problem that Driveimage had with locking the internal hard drive). Taskmanager couldn't terminate ImgBurn nor could it force a reboot. I used MS Process Explorer to find that ImgBurn had two instances of ImgBurn running that Taskmanager couldn't see. I used PE to terminate the processes for ImgBurn. Still couldn't burn, so then I forced a reboot by using the off switch on the computer. After the computer rebooted, everything appears OK and DVD burned. Any comments? Could the (nonbootable) hard drive be near to failure? Next, try to solve the networking problem (thank you all very much for you generous help). =========== > I'm the one that is trying to network my computers thru Zone Alarm. > New problem now, maybe related to networking attempts? > > Internal hard drive (not boot drive) reported unformatted, don't know > why. I reformatted, then tried to restore data from backup using > Driveimage. Could not restore because drive could not be locked by > Driveimage. Thinking that maybe I had to create a partition on the > reformatted drive, I discovered that there are no administrative tools > on the computer. The Start>Control Panel>Administrative Tools window > is blank. I'm now thinking that this is the reason that the disk > can't be locked. > > Right now I am backing up the boot drive and thinking that I need to > do a Windows XP Home repair from the CD. > > Is there a better plan? ************************************************************************ * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** ************************************************************************ * ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *************************************************************************
