PCTech Forums

Greetings! First post here guys and I think it's a good one for the "experts" out there!

I've been working with PC's for quite a while, but after this little "faux-pas", obviously not long enough!

First of all, here are my system specs;

ASUS P5BW-LA Basswood Socket 775
Intel Pentium M 6600 Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz
8 GB PC2-6400 DDR2
250 GB SATA HD w/multiple USB drives
Nvidia GeForce GT 610 1GB
Realtek Onboard 5.1 High Def Audio
Windows 7 Home Premium SP1

There was also an additional 250 GB SATA "slave" HD connected that I was using for additional storage. This lil' bugger was where my problem occured! It should be mentioned that this drive had not been wiped and still had an OS on it, Vista I think, could've been an old copy of Win 7. Anyway, I decided I wanted to clear up some space on this drive yesterday using a generic file "shredder". This drive had it's own label in My Computer, E:/ I think it was, so I thought there would be no harm in deleting all the old files from it that had been used when it had previously been a main OS drive. This included Program Files, Users, Windows... the whole lot! As I said, this drive had it's own label, so I assumed there wouldn't be a problem. I also came across a folder called "Windows.old" that I had never seen before and included it in the "shred". I should also mention that all this was done while booted up in Safe Mode.

Anyway, long story short... when this little operation was complete and I rebooted in normal mode, all my desktop icons were gone except for My Computer and Recycle Bin and I had no background. So I went into C:/ drive and all my programs were still there but I found that in Control Panel, all my Administrative Tools were gone along with who knows what other OS elements! After a lot of futile research, I ended up wiping my main drive, reinstalling Windows and basically starting from scratch.

Now I have a NEW Windows.old folder on my C:/ drive with all my old software in it! I won't be messing with THAT thing again!

So does anyone know of a way I could have solved this problem without having to start again from scratch? Any insight is appreciated! Sorry this is so long-winded!

Cheers!

You could have tried running SFC (system file checker) after wiping the slaved drive there is a good chance that would have replaced the needed OS files.

You should always install a Windows OS with only one hard drive connected! Otherwise you end up right where you were, OS files on both drives.

This seems difficult and will take more time than just install the OS from the scratch.
It is easy to mess up with the current OS if there are 2 OS on the same partition even the installation of the new OS will automatically rename the original Windows folder to Windows.old.

I have done the same thing in the past, the best choice now is backup the data needed, and format the whole HDD and install the OS from the scratch, if still need 2 OS on the same HDD, please make them dual boot, and store each OS on the different partition. Differnet OS on the same drive is ok but suggested not to keep in the same partition.

Hope this helps.
Bill
Tech Manager, WPTinc.

Thank you bill , you are right keeping 2 os in the same partition will harm the system.