Winternals - or a similar source for a facility to scan the drive and recover any allocation areas found that appear to be files
Google search for recover files should help Most of these facilities are 30 days try, then buy, or uninstall ( but if you want to try them again later - it's a virtual system or image the OS before you install them, and restore the image after you've used them, or setup a basic OS instance and use them from there, then wipe that OS instance Note that the suppliers also tend to limit the trial by date, and the sophisticated ones check for the system to include anything with a date entry later than the trial period end JimB ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jim Anno" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, August 29, 2006 8:02 PM Subject: WinXP activation and HD problems > Hi, > > I have a hard drive sent to me by a relative in the hopes I could salvage > the pictures and other files from it. The story is that a "borrowed" copy of > WinXP was installed and the warnings to activate were ignored until one day > the computer would not boot. He thought it was just that the activation shut > it down. I put the drive in a USB external enclosure to see if I could > access the files, but I can not. Thinking perhaps there was something wrong > with my USB enclosure, I installed the drive in my computer as a slave. > Still nothing. The entire drive seems to be trashed. > > I don't think not activating a copy of Windows should cause this kind of > problem, but I thought perhaps someone here can shed some light on this > problem. Maybe there is more to the story than I was told, I will inquire > about that. > > Here are the results from what I have tried so far: > > Attempting file access with Windows explorer: > The disk in D: is not formatted. > > Device Mgr: The device is working properly. > > Device properties: Used space 0, Free space 0, Capacity 0 > > CHKDSK: The volume appears to contain one or more unrecoverable problems. > > WD Diagnostics test: Warning! One or more current or worst-case attributes > are below threshold. > > I would appreciate any advice on how to proceed. > > Thanks, > Jim > > -- > ---------------------------------------- > The WIN-HOME mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned > LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: > http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html > > -- ---------------------------------------- The WIN-HOME mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html
