Ponch

Did you try reinstalling the video drivers, as twig123 advised ?

Triple check your IDE cable at both mobo and HDD ends.

You're not very clear ("pretty sure") if the partition is damaged (and all files are unavailable) or if it's just a few systel files that have been changed. If it's just a booting problem, try the recovery from an XP cd. If the whole partition has disapeared, try Testdisk. If the partition is "damaged", explain what you mean by "damaged".

Do all your accounts use the same language & keyboard ? Does it not always happen when logging off the same account ?

Never seen a PC that wouldn't get into safe mode. Or do you have a problem with your keyboard, can't press F8 ? Is it a USB keybard ? Who needs Active Desktop ?

Answer 1: no, it does not mean that the cd is fake. Not all CDs are unique and some have a key included in setup (typically OEM). The sticker is unique though. My question; does it not say on your CD "for xxx(brand) PCs only" ? The problem might be, either you use the CD key and get a preactivated copy but for a certain hardware only (if you don't have that hardware, it doesn't work), either you use your sticker's key and need to activate, but apparently you can't because it's not authenticated anyway.

wow, Jaclaz... I'm admiring you replying again and again and with such detailed posts to the same question.

I guess the recovery process is copying a Ghost or PQI image on the C drive and then Windows installs itself after reboot. You have to get the files from the image. Maybe you need to stop the install process just after ther image is copied, then see what it contains.

I guess the data didn't have much value to you. Either the disk is good and the data was still on it, but apparently not worth the small effort, either the disk has gone bad from the operation and reformatting it is not really a solution.

Yes it is. Some explanations here for instance (not by me ).

You can try to add " /nogui " as option in the lines of your boot.ini, then you'll have nothing att all.

faq

No drive letter, no checkdisk. You coud also try Testdisk, it recovers entire partitions, providing they haven't been formatted, which is the case here.

search for BartPE, you can't miss it, you'll come up with an application (PEbulder) that builds a bootable CD that is sort of Windows Preinstall Environnement. Booting that CD, you can read NTFS, open some files, perform a chkdsk and other stuff. It can be very usefull. You need an XP install disk or at least the i386 folder, a bit nLite's way. It's not very difficult. And please.. don't ignore DeXter .

OK, I did now. I think BartPE is the way to go if you tried everything else. From BartPE, copy and paste them in a directory you have rights on, you should be ok. You can even copy them to a USB stick providing it's plugged at start. Yes I did read your last post but you say you can't put them on usb or on cd from your own system, not fro BartPE.

You need to take ownership of the documents or the folder as local administrator then give yourself the rights you need. This is in the options in the security tab of the properties.

Some PC are sold today with 512 meg, most have 1Gig (because Vista needs it since a few months), and high end PCs have 2Gigs. This is in the shops, it can hardly be taken as a norm for PCs in use. I'm sure less than 1 in 20 computers in use (I don't count industrial PCs of course) has 2Gig of RAM.

WOW !!! Where are you living ?

Read full posts please I'm with DeXter on this one, IDE cables sometimes have to be streched and turned to connect the drives, and the connector sometimes slides off a millimeter. Push them back in at both end and there you go. Hopefully.

Hum, had 5 of them messages this week. +users of those PCs complaining they're incredibly slow. Thanks ! Though next time be more clearer with your first post

Well, depending on the CD you start from, you can add Service Pack 2 (if you have SP1 or none), then for instance RyanVM's Pack of post SP2 hotfixes, then the hotfixes that were issued after Ryan's pack was made. If this is your question.

No. There is no temp directory. You put the source in a folder of your choice and everything happens in that folder, on one set of files. There have been endless threads about the way Nuhi does it. At the end, he decides cause he does all the work.

This is like claiming "See; I've been driving carefully for years without putting on my seat belt and never had an accident. It's all about driving carefully". Sure, but one day... or maybe not you but someone else... We don't have all the cards in our hands in this game. I think the statement might be correct but the conclusion is not 100%.

Thanks. That helps alot. I didn't know what it was called. [/sarcasm] I did a search on "usb" (I did) and found seven thread relevant to your question and this on the first page only. I' thought you'd be interrested in those answers instead of criticize mine.

Search for "usb".