Howdy. Recently, my Mother was uninstalling Norton Anti-virus on our computer, and upon restarting the computer, it said something about being unable to start windows due to missing a file or some such. This would suggest that the uninstallation of Norton removed some important Windows file, I imagine. We've had numerous anti-virus programs (all but Norton free) over the last couple years, if that matters.

While HP Recovery was going, there was some issue of a file being missing, if I remember correctly, an i386 cab. Retry did not work, so I clicked ignore, and eventually, everything had finished and the computer had restarted. However, things were wrong. While the hard drive shows the same amount of crap on it - only ~1 gig free, the My Music folder and My Picture folder are devoid of our stuff. Some programs are missing, and many programs don't run, and it seems that everything that is left doesn't uninstall. Everything else about the computer basically went back to factory defaults. I had to reinstall I.E. 7, and Windows installer, and all the system settings were reset.

Is there any way to get my files back? The hard drive says it's still full as it was before, yet I can't access anything. What could be the matter? A virus? An issue with uninstalling Norton? Are my files lost forever? If so, I've lost some very important information. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

What was the exact nature of the "HP Recovery"?

Was this a Factory Restore option you choose? Or?

What is the exact HP model?

If your data is Very Important then first off STOP using that computer/hard drive. The more you use it the deeper you bury the past.

You can try to slave the drive on another computer to see what data is accessible and there are also some programs that might help.

If the data is Very Valuable you can send the drive to a company to extract what they can. This process however is also very expensive.

Hard to say if Norton was to blame but having used Norton products in the past I would Never use them again.

Originally Posted by jephree

What was the exact nature of the "HP Recovery"?

It was a recovery program to reinstall Windows, or something, whatever comes on HP computers. My Mother did this while I was asleep and isn't perfectly clear on what happened.

Was this a Factory Restore option you choose? Or?

Yes

Originally Posted by jephree

What is the exact HP model?.

HPa1230n

If your data is Very Important then first off STOP using that computer/hard drive. The more you use it the deeper you bury the past.

Will do, thanks.

You can try to slave the drive on another computer to see what data is accessible and there are also some programs that might help.

How does one do that?

If the data is Very Valuable you can send the drive to a company to extract what they can. This process however is also very expensive.

How expensive, exactly? ~100$? More? Thanks

Hard to say if Norton was to blame but having used Norton products in the past I would Never use them again.

I dislike Norton intensely. Thanks dude

The computer:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/p...&lang=en&cc=us

This describes the difference between a Standard and Destructive Recovery:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/d...e=9749&lang=en

Slaving the drive would mean moving the hard drive into another desktop computer. You change the jumper on the rear of the drive from Master to slave and hook it up to a slave connector on the other computer. Then after booting the other computer you should have access to the data on this drive.

As mentioned there are some softwares out there to help if the data is no longer listed. Here is a quick Google:

http://www.google.com/search?sourcei...overy+software

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&s...drive+recovery

Also this is a very comprehensive guide: (although it takes some time to load every page):

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1139

The last page lists some Recovery softwares.

Professional recovery would most likely be at least several hundreds of dollars minimum.

I've got Active Undelete. Upon finishing a search, it appears all my junk is safe. My Pictures, My Music, and all the junk on the desktop and My Documents is safely nestled away from view. I now need a new hard drive to write this stuff to, as the program warned me that writing my stuff to the same drive would risk permanate loss. That, and I don't have the space So, with this being my computer http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/p...&lang=en&cc=us , do you know what hard drives would be compatible with my computer? Soon I'll have some cash for a hard drive, does it matter what kind I get? I'd try to get one around 100 gigs, could I run into any problems? Thanks for your help, much appreciated :1010:

According to HP that computer has both standard ATA/IDE slots as well as SATA slots. It supports SATA I not SATA II but that is a setting that can be made on the drive itself.

According to HP that computer was shipped with a 200GB SATA I drive.

Anyway you can use pretty much any drive. Either ATA/IDE or SATA.

SATA tends to be faster.

Hi Spittle, Sorry I can't be of direct help but I can endorse Jephree's warning on Norton.
My PC is a HP a1240a which came with XP (and Norton) already installed.
I got rid of Norton with some difficulty and installed AVG which I've used for years.
After some months I did a recovery to fix a DVD writing problem (again pre-installed) and Norton reared it's ugly head again.This time I couldn't get rid of it and couldn't install other stuff because of it so I had to do another recovery. This time I dealt with Norton before anything else and after uninstalling did a file search to make sure it was gone.

From my experience in dealing with Norton files:-

1. Uninstall Norton as a priority
2. Heed warnings on removal of "obscure" files
3.If you have difficulty installing other programs (especially anti virus) look for Norton still lurking around.

Good luck with your file recovery.

Originally Posted by jephree

According to HP that computer has both standard ATA/IDE slots as well as SATA slots. It supports SATA I not SATA II but that is a setting that can be made on the drive itself.

According to HP that computer was shipped with a 200GB SATA I drive.

Anyway you can use pretty much any drive. Either ATA/IDE or SATA.

SATA tends to be faster.

Thanks everyone.

So, would a SATA I drive be available at Best Buy, or one of those electronics chain-stores? Thanks again, this is all very helpful

Yes. Almost any electronics/computer store will have them.

Most likely it will be a SATA II drive. There is a jumper on the rear of the drive to set it back to SATA I (1.5gbs).

It is just an adjustment of transfer rate. Older SATA boards were not equipped for the SATA II transfer rate (3.0gbs)

Thanks a lot dude. :yippee: