The weekend from hell, need your advice

[Nitemare]

Posted this in technical support but no one answered. I'm leaving work in an hour or so to try and resolve this before the stores close.

I've been watching some dvd's on my computer with powerdvd on W2k pro. This resulted in the occasional lockup so I tried to install another viewer to see if that was part of it. At the end of the install, I get an error message saying that it could not locate a dll file...well I think no biggie and then I reboot..

I reboot and slam....The procedure entrypoint MD5Final could not be located in ADVAPI32.dll

I can't get past this error message, I try last known good and no cigars, then I have to repair(cringe) seems to repair ok and I get to the login screen which is strange considering I have it set to logon automatically. Put it my usual id and password..the domain such and such is not accessable..so I try with the administrator and password, still no dice.

I've got a couple of partitions on the primary hard drive so I attempt to install w2k on another partition to maybe do some damage control...Gets halfway installed and the blue screens during the plug and play detection.
"+++ Hardware Malfunction
Call your hardware vendor for support
+++ The system has halted"

Have to turn my computer off and try again. Same results when I try it in a different partition as well. W2k setup sees all these occurences and I can attempt to repair them with the same hardware error message..

I'm sort of desperate now and since all the partitions except for one blank one is on ntfs, I can not even see it from the windows me that I have installed on the secondary hard drive. so I attempt to install over top of the one on c, get the hardware error message. Then I attempt to format the drive with w2k setup and then do the install, same hardware error message.

Then I have to go get a cheapie modem because my usrobotics 56k fax internal modem is not compatible with windows me. Best buy only has cheapie modems starting at 50 bucks, the other shelves were empty...the bastids. So I am left running on windows me with a cheapie modem I found at office depot with most of my programs and personal stuff stuck on inaccessable ntfs partitions.

I am thinking of maybe flashing the bios in my motherboard to see if that will fix it, maybe replace the motherboard, and see if I can find a program that will let me recover the data from those drives(about 30 gigs worth...hopefully change it to fat32 so ME can see it)...never I repeat never will I use ntfs again.

I know Partition magic can convert from NTFS to fat32 and vice versa, but I don't know if it will have to format the drives to do this. Does Norton System works or another utility program offer this?

So any ideas on what caused the problems, recommended fixes or suggestions, and software recommendations would be highly appreciated...

Partition magic
My system is...
MSI K7 turbo motherboard
900 Mhz AMD TBird 200 Mhz
2x256 MB High density PC100 memory
Maxtor 40 GB ATA66 7200 RPM hard drive
3D Prophet geforce MX video card(original not the 200 or 400)
Phillips 12x dvd player and cdrom
onboard AC 97 sound
teac floppy
secondary hard drive is a Maxtor 6.8 GB 5400 RPM ATA66

 

[gopunk]

sorry i can't help you more, but i'm pretty sure partition magic says it can do it without loss of data.

 

[Nitemare]

I was kind of worried about ntfs with it's file permissions and stuff maybe screwing things up. I don't have any file restrictions and was only using ntfs for it's superior file storage.

Thanks for the input gopunk

 

[freegeeks]

get some little proggie so you can access your NTFS partition under ME or Win98

i'm using something like that -- don't know the name however -- i have to boot in Win98
give me a second

[edit]

i got my little thingy from www.winternals.com -- it's called "NTFS for Win98" -- you can download a free version of the software. should solve your problem

good luck

 

[Nitemare]

<< get some little proggie so you can access your NTFS partition under ME or Win98

i'm using something like that -- don't know the name however -- i have to boot in Win98
give me a second >>



waiting patiently

 

[BooneRebel]

NTFSdos

 

[freegeeks]

waiting patiently

Check above reply

 

[freegeeks]

i mean check my edited message above

 

[Nitemare]

I think I am going to be able to access the ntfs drives and may be able to reinstall w2k after i flash my bios(crossing fingers) Anyone ever experience this before or know what happened?