Still Dead

[bobquasit]

The boot disk allowed me to get into the system on a basic level, but I can't reinstall Windows because the CD drives are not being recognized. This may be because one is a DVD-ROM, and the other is a burner; I don't know. But I spoke to someone at PC's For Everyone, and he tells me that it's very hard indeed to reinstall Windows 98 in this sort of situation. I will probably have to find some way to reformat the C drive, losing years of work and a ton of programs, and install Windows fresh. I may be able to save some of my data by installing Windows on my old ancillary D drive first and temporarily making it the master drive; that might allow me to get the burner working long enough to burn off the gigs and gigs of data that I have. But it looks very much as if my computer will never be the same, and I am totally screwed.

I also don't have the technical skills to be comfortable doing some of this stuff.

Comments

Suggestion

[unquietsoul5.livejournal.com]

Rather than scrag the data on the drive, can you get a new drive to replace it and switch the old drive into a slave position? Then you could format and install on the new drive, and should be able to access your data.

But, in general, yes, once you've had something like this happen your computer will probably not be the same. It is the nature of the beast. You need to have regular and as complete as possible backups done. Even then it won't help for everything.

I have an external hard drive (USB port) that I use weekly for my backups, along with burning CDs of data every few months.

Despite this I sit in trepedation as my notebook pc is presently in for a power supply problem, and is somewhere in Illinois to have this fixed. I have software that if lost is not replaceable (No disks, and/or electronically updated by the companies over the years before they went out of business etc.) and some that would cost be a small fortune ($500+) to replace if they do anything to my hard drive.

I understand your pain....