I read in Orchids thread that you lost some important stuff due to a computer virus. I had that happen a few years back and since I'm a tech I wasn't ABOUT to let my own stupidity and lack of practicing what I preached (about backing up) take away all the precious pictures and documents I just COULDN'T replace!! I got some software and managed to get just about everything back. You might think about trying it. Let me know if you want more information, I know several different types and could even copy some disks for you if you think it might help.

bumpin for ya

Thanks H4F, and thank you Kuljey for bumbing this up. I haven't been on much in the past couple of days.

H4F, of course I would be interested in learning of ways to re-capture my lost data. It may be too late for this, as I have since reformatted the HD twice due to this virus.

The first time was just a standard format, then reinstallation of my operating system. This however did not get the virus out of my system. It was somehow embedded in the partition of the drive, which I had decided not to mess with when I formatted the first time.

Upon installing WinME, the first thing I did was install Norton Antivirus 2002. This was when the virus reactivated itself. It completely screwed Norton, making it unusable. At the same time it now embedded itself in the restore function of WinMe.

When trying to use the restore function to perhaps get Norton back...well...that's when everything on the monitor appeared to simply melt off the screen.
Upon reboot I got nothing but system hangups.

After much investigation I finally figured out why the first reboot did no good, and resigned myelf to having lost everything...used a boot disk to boot my computer, ran f/disk, deleted the partitions, re-added them, re-formatted, installed WinMe, hardware drivers, Norton Antivirus....now everything works normal. As if anything about a computer is normal, lol.

This was a very destructive virus, and I still have no clue where it orininated, nor what it was called.

But yes, for any future mishaps, I would like to know of software which might have saved my data.

Thanks

jd

It probably hid out in your memory. I had the same problem when it happend to me. I admit I didn't format or fdisk anything, and I recovered most of my data. But unless you did a low level format (which writes 0's to every sector of the drive) there is still recoverable data on your HD. Probably not in the area you reinstalled data, but chances are that's where your original OS and programs were already residing. Your actual data is HOPEFULLY still somewhere else on the drive.

email me at parent_talk@hotmail.com and I'll see if I can't get you a copy of the disks I used to get my info back. In the meantime, I wouldn't add or remove any more programs.

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