Need Help With Hard Drive

Hey guys got a problem and I need help. My hard drive has a partition and it is full of files that I thought would be safe. All of a sudden when I try to access the partition drive it asks if I want to format the drive now. But it shows that the partition is not empty in my computer. Is there anything I can do to gain access to the files again?

Its windows xp home edition

Its shows used and free space for partition but still asks me to format?

I dont want to lose these files its very important.

HELP

thanks in advance for any replies

John

 

You can try any of the recovery tools in the Data Recovery section here at Major Geeks. Or try PCInspector (it's free from http://www.pcinspector.de/Sites/file_recovery/info.htm?language=1), or you can 'build' yourself the Ultimate Boot CD for Windows (UBCD4Win) if you have a Windows XP installation CD. I think you can download it from MajorGeeks. If not, it's at www.ubcd4win.com and it's a VERY valuable tool. Worth the effort. You can also check the status of the partition by right clicking on My Computer > Manage and under Storage you can double click on Disk Management. Scroll thru list and look for the partition in question. Right click it and select properties to see if its active and healthy..... good luck!

hd2k

 

Thanks guys

I now know what has happened to my pc but I have no idea how to fix it. Or even if it can be fixed.

My friend who claims to be a great when it comes to pc's has messed about with the permission settings inside xp pro. He said he has claimed ownership to my user name and denied access to any others?

I leave my pc on all the time and when I turned it off the other day I could not even get windows to boot. Said cannot read autochk or something like that and stopped.

I know very little about pc repair or maintenance so I tried to just put my xp disk in and run a repair.

It says when I try to run the repair that it cannot do each file windows needs to add and comes up with skip and some other choices. Im guessing this is because they are locked?

Now I can not even get windows to try and boot after running the repair that failed the screen is black and says something about a file missing NT something or another.

I tried the recovery console and it asks for an administrator password. I didnt have one so guessed and after 3 attempts restarts.

My pc was very full so system restore had switched itself off some time back. Is there any way of fixing this problem?

I dont want to format c: drive if I can help it. Will it even allow me to install windows again with all the files being locked?

 

Its NTFS file system