I have this removable drive that was known as C:. I have programs that were installed under C:. Today, for some reason, my removable drive showed up as F: when my computer started up. I immediately went to disk management and re-assigned the C letter to this drive. Since then, I cannot access any of the files or programs installed on there. Explorer shows me an empty RECYCLED folder and Norton System Information shows me a FOUND.000 folder containing *.chk files. I tried re-assigning F but nada. Can anyone help me go back ?

What other drives do you have & how are they listed?

What happens when you boot without this drive?

I have one internal hard drive to handle the OS and one external hard drive that I use to handle all the programs and files. If I boot without the external hd, then I can usually connect it and have access to all the files and programs.

I tried using windows' SYSTEM RESTORE but it didn't give me my drive back. The only thing that happened before this incident is me updating Windows via Windows Update.

What is the OS drive listed as? This is usually C:

Are you running Pro or Home? SP1 or 2?

What Windows Update did you take? You can find this at the Update Site on the left hand menu: View Installation History.

Have you tried a restore point to before the Windows Update?

How is this drive connected? USB? Are you saying that it works ok as long as you do not boot with it connected?

Maybe something here will help:

drive letter changed

Okay, my OS drive is listed as D: and has been since installation. My external was connected via PCMCIA and always was C: until recently. I also have a floppy A: and a CD-Rom E:

I'm running XP Pro, no SP.

I took updates KB842773, KB828741, KB873374, KB834704, KB833987, 810833, KB841356, KB835732 and KB890830. I didn't take the time to download SP2.

The drive would always be recognized as C: whether it was plugged in on startup or not. Since the start of this issue, the drive shows up as F: whether it is plugged in on startup or not.

I don't know if this is any help, but the external HD uses FAT32 file system. I can't restore to a point previous to update because there is none. I can only restore after the first update and it doesn't help. It does say : no changes will be made to drive F because it was disconnected.

It seems all the data on this drive is held in the FOUND.000 and FOUND.001 folders that Norton System Information sees. Is there any way for me to recuperate these ?

I went through the referenced links and unfortunately for me, the discussion there is more on how to change the drive letter. I didn't see anything relating to losing files after a letter change.

I will try connecting my external HD to a laptop at work and see if I have access to my files. If so, then I guess I'll backup all my important documents and then re-format and re-install. I do want to avoid this if at all possible so any further hints are welcomed!

My only hints are

1. Take the time & install SP2.

2. Use ntfs: CONVERTING FAT32 to NTFS

3. Try this: PC INSPECTOR™ File Recovery 4.x

4. Disable any & all Norton programs while changing your system.

I have no experience with PCMCIA cards, so, I am not familiar with any possible issues there. If this issue arose after a Windows Update I am lead to believe that that initiated the issue. Perhaps SP2 will resolve it for the future.

If you feel the need to repair your XP without losing programs & settings a Repair install works well (assuming you have a full vesion XP disk). Here is a good guide:

http://michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm


Hope this helps.


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Thanks for your time. I ended up reformating my external to NTFS. I'll buy a bigger internal HD and stop using the external until I need to. PC File Recovery saw unreadable files only.

Thanks for the update. Let us know if we can help further.

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