I was posting some pictures to a bird forum last night and when I tried opening a folder I was told that the hard drive, c:, was nor formatted and asked whether I wished to format it. Naturally I clicked on No and tried to contain my mounting panic. I defragmented the hard drive and was told that the defragmentation process was successful apart from 123 Kb in My Pictures - I'm assuming this refers to the problem folder though originally that contained a lot more data. The files are all backed up so I tried to delete the folder but was told this was not possible as the "catalogue is not empty". In the end I just renamed the folder "Black Hole" in case I click at the wrong time and accidently reformat the harddrive. Under Windows 98 I would have run Scan Disk to see whether there was physical damage to the harddrive and repair or at least isolate the damaged section. As I recall that's not possible with XP. I thought of restoring an earlier configeration but I'm not sure when the problem arose. I really have 2 questions.
1. Is there a likelyhood of a serious problem with the harddrive?
2. How can I get rid of the folder and prevent the same thing from happening again? I'm not sure if it's relevant but I have a dsl connection with a firewall from Zone Labs, a virus progamme (McAfee) and I regularly scan the harddrive using Spybot and Adaware.
I am having a problem understanding when I load windows xp pro.before I did it without no problems,what I mean by that is my hard drives.I have two of them both are 500gb.one I had for avid editing and the c drive for other stuff like software.I guess I just got lucky before.I had both of them 500gb.but what I need to know please remember I am not a genius
I want to format my hard drive ( been two years ) ! It is now running XP Pro, which I do not have the discs, and I want to switch back to XP Home, which I have one disc that came with the computer !I've tried booting up with the disk, so that I can format my hard drive, but nothing happens!
i just installed windows xp pro i had layin around just for the hell of it, and it turns out that it had SP0. my internet connection is extremely slow at the moment so it would be painful to download service pack 2. i have a winxp home cd that has SP2 included on that. is there anyway i can install it off that, with out formatting and using XP home?
I just purchased a Win XP Pro OS from a local PC retail store and I installed it on my machine.Everything went by plan.After everything was done.I restart my computer and in the middle of the boot-up I get this message.Setup failed to install the product catalog (Fatal error). And another try to boot it up I get message Error Signature for WinXP Pro is invalid. The third time I get the first message again.I ran the setup disk again maybe I did something wrong No same thin again.Any cure for that?Any repairs possible? Any download from microsoft to solve the problem?
I'm formatting my hard drive and re-installing XP, and I'm wondering if I can delete the system partition without any adverse effects to the system. When I try to delete it from the XP Setup disk, it warns me not to do it, but I'm trying to create a larger partition for the system. Can I delete the system partition and create a new one.
I got a new system assembled a month back and after 15 days the stop error began to happen (this was after my bro tried to transfer files from his iPod & it didn't happen). I looked up a lot of forums but didn't find this one and couldn't figure out what the problem might be. Restored system, disabled services, but nothing worked. Finally I got the C: drive formatted and Win XP SP2 reinstalled. Didn't install unnecessary/extra software this time. But I found this site a day before getting it formatted, so saved the last 5 minidump files. And the day after the reinstallation, it has started happening again. The first time it was the bcmndis.sys file -- Airtel Beetel 220bx modem -- connected with the USB; couldn't find another driver for it online.
This is my DAD's personal computer now, we are trying to format his hard drive i get to the point where it asks me whether i want to proceed, i put yes and hit enter, it then doesn't start formatting, it just say C:WINDOWS?
Fitted an extra HDD to my machine. Detected in bios but XP will not find it. Drive is unformatted (new), how do you format in windows XP. It was easy in 98SE, just go to dos, fdisk then format. How do you do this in XP?
I know theres heaps of partition and format tools out there to help you do certain things, but what i was wondering is instead of formatting the old fashioned way, and losing everything, is there a way i can format and not lose anything, so i dont have to do a million re installs? my hard drive is partitioned NTFS. and i have my C: where all my windows files are stored seperate to all my other drives.
I have been trying to format my hard drives. I tried using Device Manager, it let me format my E drive, but not the C drive, and then I tried by booting with the XP CD. Somehow I managed to install Windows on my E drive, and my C drive is still as it was. I have been following the instructions on how to format and install to the letter, but it's not happening for me. All of the screens match what the instructions say, but the result is nothing.I have searched this forum for HD/XP advice, and have done as suggested, no luck.How do I format my C drive, and start again?
This forum has been incredibly helpful, and now I must ask another "ignorant" question to maintain my computer loving insanity. I recently acquired a used laptop running XP Home. I use Pro for work, so I thought it wise to install Pro over the top of the the former owners' OS and thereby effectively delete his old files etc. Well, what I found was that Windows simply imported the old OS info right into the new install, leaving folders, files and programs I didn't want on the hard drive. So my question for you guys and gals is this. How do I destroy everything on my hard drive, then make the laptop (without floppy drive available), accept the reloading of my XP Pro CD? It is a full OEM version by the way. If I can format the HD, and have BIOS boot from CD-ROM, will I have a "fresh" CD-only install at that point, or will there still be little goblins of information running around in my system
Yeah I have reformatted my hard drives a few times over the years so I am no stranger to it however I am just curious about something. When I go to reformat with my DELL Windows XP Home Edition CD I will then revert back to SP1. I have SP3 installed onto my computer right now. I also have a SP2 CD I got from Microsoft about 3 years ago or so. Should I first install the SP2 cd or is there no need to do that seeing SP3 should have all of SP2 updates in it?
I am running windows XP Pro and work with multi media applications, during playback of these files or sometimes in windows media player (and at times for know reason at all) my system will just shut down - no warning at all. The applications are not particulary using up much memory in which case I have more than enough to support. Upon starting up again this is the error message that is showing up in the event viewer (Application)
if someone could tell me how to format windows xp home edition from the bios and not using the xp disk. I have already tried right clicking on drive c and selecting format but the message says windows cannot format this drive. Quit any disk utilities or other programs that are using this drive, and make sure that no window is displaying the contents of the drive. Then try formatting again.
So I closed all open programs that I could but still no luck. Then I tried the format from running the run command and typing format c:but I get this message format cannot run because the volume is in use by another process. Format can run if this volume is dismounted first. All open handles to this volume would then be invalid. would you like to force a dismount on this volume? (y/n) so I type y for yes and hit enter then nothing
I found out that suddenly all my hard drive-related activity weren't working right, like copying to and from the main drive were almost as slow as USB1 connection and hogged the CPU, only in kernel times whereas any transfer made between external drives, be they USB or Firewire, functionned normally.This malfunction came sometimes with grinding noises from the drive and after a while a system lockup with a blue screen that displayed two types of message, I'll have to look them up again but one mentions a kernel stack error.At first I thought of a hardware failure but this theory got dispelled after I reinstalled XP on another partition on the same drive and noticed everything worked normally. When I activate the old partition and XP install, the problem remains. I checked and tried to update the controller drivers but they all seemed to be unchanged and up-to-date.my config consists of XP SP1 French, on a Laptop with one drive - ask me for more specifics if needed.
My computer has been acting weird and slow since last couple week, I want to format and install new windows XP pro. But the thing i dont want to lose some softwares and drivers. So what should i do to backup them all and format my computer ? I used to format and install OS but not backing up anything. Now i am worry to losing some important softwares and drivers.My question is there any software or any way to let us backup software + driver to the CD then we can format hdd and install OS like normally?
I have a usb external enclosure which holds a 120 gig hard drive that I use for storage. I shut it off when I am done to save power, and just the other day I notice a file on it that is quite large isn't allowing me to open it any longer. It keeps saying that the 'file or folder is corrupt and unreadable'...Weird. I was just looking at the folder yesterday. Is there absolutely anything I can do to get that data back?? All the other files on that hard drive are fine. Why did it target out that file?
I have a Gateway 7422GX which as a Mobility Radeon 9550. I repaired windows using the cd because I restarted my computer and it was either going to take 7min+ to boot, or just wasn't going to. I got stuck at the windows splash screen. I'm using windows professional. Whenever I try to install any of the drivers, I get the same error message: Setup did not find a driver compatible with your current hardware or operating system. Setup will now exit.
On an XP PC, when I try to empty the RECYCLE BIN I get an error message: Cannot Delete dc2: Access is denied (If you click OK, you get the window again. Click OK the second time and it goes away)... and it fails to empty it. I can go into the BIN and do a CTRL A and hit delete and all is fine. A search for dc2 shows 6 instances on the PC and they are all know entities in various locations.
All the entries on the "all programs"list show empty although the associated programs are still operative. Any clues as how to fix this? Useing XP Home SP3
The folder for My Documents appears to be empty. If I open it, it basically looks like a blank folder. If I open properties>general for it, it shows that it takes up 0 bytes in size/size on disk, and it has "0 Files, 0 folders".
I'm trying to do some general hard-drive cleanup, and deleting temporary files and whatnot. Regardless of how I select any group of files from any directory, or even from the recycle bin, it simply opens the delete dialogue and says it's deleting, but nothing happens. It stays there interminably. Never finishes, never deletes any files. It doesn't hang , I can cancel and stop it, but nothing has happened in the interim. I'm stumped. I did search and follow the thread on an earlier post MSKB, but that didn't help.
How do I get my visited websites to remain. Twice in the last week, I've lost the recent websites I've visited. I have IE6 and when I click on the drop down for the address bar, the box is empty. People usually want to delete this, but I want to be able to keep it.No viruses or spyware.
i just bought a new laptop. an HP pavilion if it helps. and having copied over some music from my old desktop to the laptop i tried to move 5gigs of music from one folder on the laptop to another one for ease of sorting. i pressed ctrl x and then ctrl v. it was copied ok as i saw it all in the folder. i closed the folder and opened itunes to add the folder to the library. it seemed to not have any music in it.. so then i tried to reopen the folder i just created with the music that was very definately in it. but it is now empty and i get Access is denied.. the music has dissappeared and doesnt appear on any searches i run. i cant delete/open/move or do anything to the now empty folder.it just coes up with D:music is not accessable. access is denied.the odd thing is that i have another 10 folders all empty and undeletable in another bit of my laptop that i want to delete as they are blocking me copying in an addon for WoW.as you can guess im not exactly a genius at this stuff. and just trying to tidy up my pc has resulted in several hours frustration and lots of swearing.
I acquired an 80gb external HD from a freind. It is not clean it so I want compress a lot his files and folders and leave one to side for while till its safe to delete it all. I have permission to delete everything. But I am being a little cautious.The trouble is one of the directory is huge, about 20gb, with many subdirectories and folders. There many instances when whole list of folders are empty. There could be 100s or 1000s of these empty folders.Is there a freeware filemanager with a filter that I can use to isolate all the empty folders and delete them. And how would you use the filter. I would then be able to defrag the HD.
I have gone into my recycle bin on many occasions, and there are never any files in there. At the bottom it also says "0" objects. As a novice, what have I setup wrong, and what can I do to remedy this?
