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Question concerning reformatting & backing up data

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dudeman007

Diamond Member
Well I officially f*ed up my computer Monday. I was browsing the show off your desktop thread and saw that someone was using some cool programs to spice up their desktop. I made my first bad move by downloading these. I downloaded:

Konfabulator: adds objects such as clocks and weather monitors to your desktop
IconX: changes the look of your icons on your desktop
Object Dock: adds a bar at the bottom to resemble the apple style desktop
UX PATCHER: "This program will patch your uxtheme.dll file so you can use any 3rd party visual style on Windows XP, XP SP1, XP SP2, Windows Server 2003. File protection dialogs should be cancelled and a reboot is required after using this patch."

So......I downloaded them all with SP1 installed (don't know if I should have done that). After downloading the uxpatcher I realized that it fixed something on my startup, which allowed me to install SP2. I had problems before installing SP2 and this seem to fix the problem.

SO after all of this, my computer was hella slow and took like 3 minutes to reach the start up screen as opposed to 30 seconds. I uninstalled all the programs, but I couldn't get rid of SP2. The uninstaller just sits there and does nothing.

I am planning to reformat, but I need to back up some files. I have an external hard drive, however my computer doesn't seem to want to recognize it. It shows up as installed through the device manager, but it doesn't show up in my computer.

Many programs can't run due to low system memory, and many drives have been installed for instance I can't play music.

NOW can anyone help me out here? I have my drive into 3 partitions, C with all the system stuff and programs, D with games, and E with music and personal documents. I only want to back up E. Would it be possible to only reformat C? Is there a way to get my computer to recognize my external hdd? Any ideas at all?
 
First of all have you tried using System Restore from Safe Mode to put the computer back the way it was prior to SP2? This would save you a lot of trouble.

As to the backing up of files, you should boot into safe mode and see if it recognizes your external drive. If you still can't see the drive in Safe Mode, go into the Disk Manager (Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Computer Management, Disk Management) and see if it appears in the lower part of the chart. If so, right click on it and assign it a drive letter.

Go ahead and copy your files to the external from safe mode.

Yes you can just format C (no need to backup your games and MP3 drives). When you run the XP installer you will have the option of deleting and creating partitions. Delete the first partition ONLY, then create a new one in the unassigned space left after deleting the old one and select it as the partition to install XP. Format it as NTFS and use the Quick option to save some time.

Hope this helps...
 
Originally posted by: FlyingPenguin
First of all have you tried using System Restore from Safe Mode to put the computer back the way it was prior to SP2? This would save you a lot of trouble.

As to the backing up of files, you should boot into safe mode and see if it recognizes your external drive. If you still can't see the drive in Safe Mode, go into the Disk Manager (Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Computer Management, Disk Management) and see if it appears in the lower part of the chart. If so, right click on it and assign it a drive letter.

Go ahead and copy your files to the external from safe mode.

Yes you can just format C (no need to backup your games and MP3 drives). When you run the XP installer you will have the option of deleting and creating partitions. Delete the first partition ONLY, then create a new one in the unassigned space left after deleting the old one and select it as the partition to install XP. Format it as NTFS and use the Quick option to save some time.

Hope this helps...
Click to expand...

Well Disk Manager doesn't work right now for some reason so that's out of the question. This information helped out a lot though. Thanks very much for helping out. I'll give it a go tonight!🙂
 
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