System Restore and Search File feature not working

[PartyBoy]

I was unable to install/ run the cleanup utility. I got another error message.

I have a "Recovery CD-ROM" that came with the PC (Mesh) which I presume has windows on, as windows was already installed when I bought the pc. I have got a manual also that tells me how to use the CD and reinstall the OS.

I have a couple of q's though about doing this. Obviously all existing files will be lost. I have 2 hard drives installed C: and D: which are 500Gb each. C has everything on and D is clean apart from a few avi movie files that I save onto there. Luckily I have most of the installer files for my existing programs (pop up blocker, counterspy, tune-up utils etc etc) so I can easily put those back on when I have a clean Windows. My question is; Am I able to put all these installer files (plus my personal files such as photos and mp3's) onto my D drive and when I do the windows reinstall will the D drive contents be unaffected? Or do I have to burn all my files onto DVD's while I reinstall windows as the D drive will be wiped as well?

Also, I have accounted for all my "Program files" and can put them back on after the reinstall of windows, but there is one that I am unsure what I must do with:

C:\Program Files\Silicon Image\3132 Sataraid5\Driver

I think this is to do with how the 2 hard drives perform? What should I do about this if anything?

thank you

[Gecko]

PartyBoy

According to www.meshcomputers.com you can perform a repair install of Windows XP using the recovery CD.
Step by step instructions can be found .

A repair install will reinstall windows on top of itself without loosing any already installed programs or files.
I think that this is you best option at this point.

As for the 3132 Sataraid5 driver it can be download .

[PartyBoy]

Thanks Gecko. This is what's happened:

I used the Recovery CD and tried a "repair" but that didn't work properly and it resulted in nothing changing on my C drive (still had all the old files and problems) but it installed a new Windows on D drive (2nd hard disk).

So I used the Recovery again and tried a complete new installation and format which took a while. Here's the situation as it stands (I've tried telephoning Mesh tech support but they seem to be more clueless than me!):

When I open "My Computer" instead of what I should have which was:

C: Primary hard drive which has windows on
D: Blank hard drive
E: DVD rom/CD RW
F: DVD RW/CD RW


I now have:

F: A hard drive which has windows on (looks to be a complete reinstallation and works fine)
D: DVD Rom/CD RW
E: DVD RW/CD RW


So, there is no C: drive, this appears to now be called F. and my second blank hard drive which used to be called D: has completely vanished.


I rebooted and entered bios and it says this:

Primary IDE Master :[Not Detected]
Primary IDE Slave :[Not Detected]
Secondary IDE Master :[Sony CD-RW CRX]
Secondary IDE Slave :[Sony DVD RW DW-1]
Third IDE Master :[Maxtor 6H500F0]
Fourth IDE Master :[Maxtor 6H500F0]
Fifth IDE Master :[Not Detected]
Sixth IDE Master :[Not Detected]
IDE Configuration


I've looked in the IDE Configuration screen and it looks like this:

RAID Setup

SATA1 and SATA2 [Enabled]
SATA3 and SATA 4 [Enabled]

nVidia RAID Function [Disabled]
SATA1 [Disabled]
SATA2 [Disabled]
SATA3 [Disabled]
SATA4 [Disabled]

[PartyBoy]

Also, when my second hard drive appears (with your help hopefuly ), I'm concerned that it will still have a windows installation on there from when I tried to repair the installation in the first instance. Will I be able to format this drive so its completely clean? I only want to use this second hard drive for large video files.

[Gecko]

It sounds like the fresh install was to a new partition on your D drive therefore making it F drive I think.

Go to Start > Control panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management,
on the left side click the plus sign next to Storage and then click Disk Management.
Does your C: drive (it would be listed like Disk 0) show up on the right side lower section?
Tell me what all is listed for drives and partitions I'll need to know before we proceed.

At some point it might be easiest to just physically swap the drives inside the case but lets wait until I see what's going on.

[PartyBoy]

I've taken a couple of photos that might explain it better than I can:

[Gecko]

Ok we are in business

First let's partition and format the Disk 1 drive:
Go back to the Disk Management section and right click on the Drive 1 unallocated section and select New Partition.
In the New Partition Wizard click next. On the next page make sure “Primary Partition” is selected and click next.
Now make the size equal to the maximum (it should already be set to it), click next again. On the next page the computer will automatically choose the first available drive letter for the new drive.
Hopefully it will be G: you need to maker sure it does not assign the letter C to the drive.
If it does the use the dropdown to select G
Next the New Partition Wizard asks if you would like to format the new partition and if so what format choose, NTFS.

Do not close the “Computer Management” window until it finishes, you will know it is done when the word under the size of the drive changes from “Formatting” to “Healthy”

Reboot the system and see if your F drive is now listed as C
If not then you will have to change drive letter through the same Disk Management
Right clicking on the F drive and selecting "Change drive letter and paths"

[PartyBoy]

Brilliant! The drive is clean and available just how I wanted it. It called itself G:

I rebooted as you suggested but the windows drive is still called F:

I did the Disk Management thing for F: and an error me told me:

"Windows cannot modify the drive letter of your system volume or boot volume"

Incidentally I plugged my external hard drive in and it assigned this as C: so I've done the Disk Management thing on this one and changed it to H:

so I've now got:

D: CDRW
E: DVDRW
F: Local Disk (which has windows)
G: Local Disk (blank, ready to have my video files)
H: External Maxtor Hard Drive.


I don't particularly mind if I can't rename the windows drive to C: unless you think there might be problems with certain things as C: is generally univeral??

Might the drive letter issue be something to do with that the hard drives are listedin the BIOS as 3rd and 4th Primary Master's or is this nothing to do with it?

[Gecko]

[PartyBoy]

[PartyBoy]

[Gecko]

[PartyBoy]