kat -

I have been avoiding the suggestion that your problem is a hard drive failure, since there seemed to be some hope that another reason could be found.

I suspect the "experts" probably were correct in their assumption that the hard drive had gone. The "symptoms" are consistent - or at least not inconsistent = with at least partial loss of data due to HD damage. Replacing the HD would be the "normal" repair procedure, but a more "knowing" repair shop would recognize that people might want to have the chance to try recovery, and should NOT have "trashed" the old drive without asking. It probably is pretty routine to just discard a defective drive though, for many service shops, because data recovery is almost never found to be a viable option for most users who would consult them.

There are numerous data recovery businesses, and your best choice probaly would be to send the drive to one of them, if you're able to recover the drive. Having examined the options though, about a month ago when LiK's C:\ drive crapped out, I found that the ones I would trust typically charge an initial fee on the order of $500(US) to examine the drive to see what might be recoverable, with an additional charge for the actual recovery.

Lin's HD was still under warranty, and I was under some pressure to get it back to the mfr for a free replacement. I was not able to find an "off the shelf" recovery program that offered any real hope of getting anything useful. A major problem was that most such programs still operate in DOS mode for any data recovery, and her drive (and yours if it came with WinXP installed) was NTFS format, which none of the easily available programs can read - in recovery mode.

WinXP includes a utility called the "Recovery Console" that sometimes is able to let you copy files from a damaged drive, or rarely, to reconstruct the MBR to restore a drive; but without expert knowledge of Windows I can not recommend that you even look at trying to use it. (I wasn't able to get "that expert" with a month of researching it rather intensively, and wouldn't expect more than limited success even after I learned enough to try installing it.)

The Recovery Console is NEVER installed in any standard WinXP package, but should be on system CDs, for the curious. The curious should note that Microsoft KB information on the module is vague, conflicting, with essential information scattered among a dozen or so separate articles that aren't all that easy to find. It's another of the "if you need it you'll know it" things designed to keep the consultants in business.

John