----------------------------------- GreenTiger Sat May 01, 2004 10:46 am Not Quite Programming, but kinda definitely Urgent. ----------------------------------- Okay, okay, I know this might not be the right board for this, so you can give me links or whatever you can if you think I should go somewhere else for this...but you're the only ones I thought would actully have an answer. Okay, I'll say this succintly, if possible. I'm rendering in 3ds Max 4 on my really cool computer, running Deliplayer 2 (it's a .mod file player) at the same time. In the past this has caused no problems. My computer hadn't been doing anything right then, I'd finished saving and I was staring blankly at the screen when it happened... basically my screen decided it'd stare blankly back... I heard some weird high-pitched sound (almost like the neuraliser from MIB) and all of a sudden the damn ****ing thing resets. I try to go into WIN2K and it won't let me because it says it's missing files. Unfortunately, this is a familiar screen because of the numerous system crashes I've been having since my new hard disk (a 180 GB or so Western Digital HD) So I reset and start up WIN98 SE (and thank god for the small miracles) it works, because it's installed on my old drive. I check my new drive and I see that all the files are really ****ed up bad. I used to have 18 folders or so and tons of files in the root...and now, well...I've attached the BMP of it (all my editing equipment was on D...I only ever use 98 for playing games, and within the last month, recovering from crashes.) Okay, okay, good news; I became wise to this after the first few times. I backed up last night, and I'd only made two more models since this morning, no new coding for my game, no massive loss. But it'll take forever to reinstall all my equipment. So I took out the two differant file recovery programs that I had, neither of which were cheap when I got them THIS MONTH (again, becoming wise to these crashes) but for the first time, they can't read a damn thing there. They were reading gobbledy-gook as bad as the shiznat in the BMP, just MORE of it. However, I was connected to the net at the time. So; here's where you guys come in to help. WTF was this? Is it indeed the new hard drive (wouldn't be any big surprise) or is it a computer virus/trojan, ect that I couldn't detect (again, wouldn't be surprised; I've been getting suspicious emails, and my Norton/Ad-Aware/Trojan Killer is like two months old. More importantly ('cause that first part is really a second prioirity) how do I fix it? Any assistance that allows me to recover all my lost data (or at least my windows settings and programs and stuff) will earn more than just my eternal gratitude, but probably first billing in the credits to my game. Yeah, I know, it's not much, what else can I offer really? I'm hoping to become a more active participant here as soon as I've got my act together, but...that's where I need a little bit of, well... ...Help? End of Excerpt yeah, fun stuff. Now I have a FOUND.000 folder on my drive and I know those arn't good. Suggestions? ----------------------------------- the_short1 Mon May 03, 2004 4:45 pm ----------------------------------- u dont have anywhere to select LBA or NORMAL or ??? last one still cant remember... maybe i should check on next boot ;) hmmm.... sounds like ur hard drive got fucked bad.. and u did the WORST thing %% at least i think.... u ran scandisk and acually clicked yes.. :(i had the turncated thingys... and the FATS not being the same... and when i acually pressed yes,,, it made EVERYTHING turn into folder.001 folder.002 file001.chk i mean EVEYRTHING..... *** that happened to my 1GIG.. *not WD ***this is about my 500 MB.. WD but.... i got the black | as all my files when i had my partitions wrong and / or LBA - Normal - ??? one wrong.... i dont know which one it was ... but... one of them made the HD turn into mush... then it was having issues acually geting scaned...then that is when i tried LBA even thou the HD was under a gig... then it worked... for the most part.. but i think i damaged.. or something... meh... i put it in a computer that i wanted to sell and took the 1.6 GIG from it ;) ok... for u... try really hard to find the setting changer for LBA etc... try it on a different setting (preferably LBA) and see how that does.. ur partitions look perf..,.... the reason fdisk cant see ur full HD space.... tis cuz fdisk was around wen 1 GIG was like OMG that is HUGE!.... let alone a 180 GIG!... so ... thats that... ----------------------------------- Martin Mon May 03, 2004 5:53 pm ----------------------------------- Maybe you got rooted? Speaking of which, I think we should start a petition to get windows's default error message changed to: 'You got pwn3d. Please reinstall Windows.' ----------------------------------- GreenTiger Mon May 03, 2004 8:45 pm ----------------------------------- I don't know. In any case, Backup has been my saving grace. I suggest everyone backs up anything they consider important. It really is worth it to save you that one error that costs you months and months and months... especially because Data Recovery software seems to pick and choose the times when it wants to work. ----------------------------------- the_short1 Tue May 04, 2004 4:26 pm ----------------------------------- yea...i have a CD will all the important sh1t.... and most important is the SC maps i MAKE.... and my save games and stuff like dat... plus of course all me and my families personal folders... best thing is prob a second hd about 1gig that way u dont have to reburn and its more solid... cuz sometimes burning corruts files .. :(