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General discussion

This one is for the books

Jun 4, 2007 9:32AM PDT

Recently, I tried; to install 98se on an external hd. All seemed to go
well. In the meantime, I had another win98se on another hd, different
partition, with XP. that was my original setup and worked
great....Now, after the intallaion, i boot up and I get all kinds of
files missing, and it does show its the recent external hd. i decided,
that I didn't want to bother and was going to delete it....i used my
start up disk, went to that new partition and tried to delete win98
( that is the title I gave it when asked me in what directory do I
want to install it )..It comes back all would be erased in directory.
I say yes and after, the win98 folder is still shown. I could not
delete the directory...no matter what syntax i used in dos. Low and
behold, i wanted to see if my original win98se that was sharing the hd
with xp, was working. It wasn't. I'm getting all missing files and
etc. Why would the installation of win98 in the external hd affect the
original ? I know I can format the external drive and lose all, but I
had a lot of pictures saved on that hd and I think I lost them. If I
did, can I get; them back?.

Discussion is locked

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In short, no Microsoft version of WIndows ...
Jun 4, 2007 9:57AM PDT

Runs off USB drives. All you noted should happen.

Bob

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one for the books
Jun 4, 2007 10:50PM PDT

Can you clarify your statement?

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There are some versions not from Microsoft that do.
Jun 4, 2007 11:00PM PDT

But are extremely limited. Look up BARTPE on google.com to see what I mean.

Bob

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Basically, Windows Won't Install As An External Boot Drive
Jun 4, 2007 9:58AM PDT

...and I'm guessing that when you attempted to do that, the system may have "tried" to perform a parallel installation to the external drive.. As such, it may have associated parts of the boot information, registry entries, and files to the external drive.. But unfortunately, none of that works as you would intend it.. Deleting the Windows files from the external drive probably took other data including registry associations with it. It seemed like it installed correctly but it didn't.

Still, if you boot to XP on the internal drive, isn't it possible to "see" other files such as your pictures that aren't part of the Windows folder on the external drive? Or is it gone entirely?

Hope this helps.

Grif

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one for the books To Grif Thomas
Jun 5, 2007 9:42AM PDT

Still, if you boot to XP on the internal drive, isn't it possible to "see" other files such as your pictures that aren't part of the Windows folder on the external drive? Or is it gone entirely?>>>


Yes, all my pictures are gone. I can't understand it, I installed windows in its own folder, so why did that process wiped out all my saved pictures in under that drive?

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Depends On Whether The Files Are Corrupted Or Not..
Jun 5, 2007 2:59PM PDT

At this point, I would attempt to access the files by plugging the USB drive into another computer and see if the files are visible.. If not, then your next move is to value those pictures.. Are they valuable enough to send to a company that recovers such damaged files? If so, let them do their best to recover your files.. If not, then you might consider some of the various file recovery programs such as the ones below:

http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htm

http://lc-tech.com/software/software.html#Recovery

http://www.handyrecovery.com/

Hope this helps.

Grif

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One for the books ---Grif
Jun 5, 2007 11:52PM PDT

Thanks Grif. I noticed one of your recommendations is offering a freeware..which I downloaded and have not used yet..mainly because of all the extensions it claimed to recover, no jpg's or any picture files were mentioned. I emailed them about this and will wait for a reply. Thanks again. Tony