ok here's one for only the best. I have two instances of windows XP installed on my hard drive?

Question

my old OS crashed and as I was trying to repair it.. I installed windows and gave it a folder of "windows2" now I would like to reverse the installation and recover my old OS. Is this even possible? All the files should still be there becasue I didnt format the hard drive before installing the second instance of windows. I can see the old folders ( or some of them) but I cant see them all..like picture folders, music folders etc I was able to retrive some of those files with the new OS but I cant seem to access all files of the old OS..how do I go about getting my old OS and data back? or even just the data..and no, like an idiot I didnt back up my hard drive.. a hard lesson learned..
Thanks for any help in advanced

Answer 1

why not just reinstall the programs like office and what have you and imbed the old data files. ive done it several times and it does work.

Answer 2

just view each windows folder and see which one to keep

delete the other by choosing archive in the attributes advance

if you keep windows2 then rename it

if it stuffs up you do a clean install by formatting c drive so nothng lost in trying

Partition the Hard drive – reasons
========================
Firstly C drive is compulsory for the Operating System (XP) (Vista), and you install all your programs on C drive.

D drive is made for YOUR files.

What you do is MOVE my documents to D drive.

When you download music, videos, pictures from your camera or make any MS Office documents or save emails, you save it on D drive.

The reason for this is to do with
1. Hard drive failure - usually a failed hard drive will not boot, but can often be seen when hooked up as a slave.
So when you get your new hard drive up and running, you can copy D drive from your old to your new. You haven’t lost anything.

2. Virus. Normally virus are programmed to infect C drive. If you get a bad virus all that has to be done is format the C drive partition then re install you OS and programs from disks.
You haven’t lost your personal stuff because its on D drive.

3. Scanning your C drive for virus or spyware. These malware programs live on C drive. It is not necessary to scan D drive. It is a lot quicker to scan a small partition than a large hard drive.


Now you can see the above is compromised by the fact that programs get updates and lots of programs are installed from the net. Therefore if you had to wipe out C drive it be hard to get it back to how it was.
To remedy this we use Norton Ghost to image C drive and store the Image on D drive.
(Vista requires a version 10 or newer of Ghost).

If you get a bad virus you just use the Ghost disk to boot up on, then copy the image stored on D drive back over C drive.
It takes less than 30 mins to rebuild C drive.
Also you may have this running on say a 250 gig HDD, and it fails. You buy a new 400 gig HDD and install both into you computer, the failed one as a slave.
Using the ghost disk to boot up on, you partition the 400 C drive to 30 gig (XP)and the remaining to D drive. Then you repack C drive from the image. Then Copy your old D drive files to your new one. In a time of less than 1 hour and it’s all running. The image loads all the drivers, OS everything.

Then you update new images of C drive every few months so that the one stored on D drive is not to far out of date.


On XP and Vista you create C drive to a maximum of (XP 30 gig, Vista 40 Gig) It doesn’t need to be any bigger, so don’t make C drive to big as you will not use it.

Answer 3

Okay, I would think you have not deleted the particians on the Harddrive- Use the XP disc to repair NOT install. It will ask you.
Only way, you might have a chance or saving stuff---try system restore. Also-in the search box--search for the files you are trying to find. If they are on the computer---you will know.
I would recommend---Get out all the disc, and prepare to reload and delete the particians, and format your harddrive.
After that put the disc away, and use system restore.