Urgent!

[Banished Angel]

I was messing around with Linux Ubuntu. I decided to install it on my system, and wanted it along side vista. When i installed Ubuntu, i must have messed up somewhere because i accidentally wiped my hard drive. Is there any possible way i can undo this and get vista and all my old files back?

[jaketo]

Short, brutal, honest answer? Probably not, not without some fairly specific skills and some money anyway.

The longer answer depends on exactly what you/Ubuntu have done to the partition that had Vista and your data on it. Without going too heavily into how computers manage data on drives, and assuming that recovering your data is the priority and that you're prepared to abandon the Vista installation (that can always be reinstalled easily later), you can always try mounting the physical drive as a slave drive in a different PC - this may let you browse the Vista partition and recover some/all of your data, although you may need to mark the partition as active first, if you can still see it. It you don't have a second PC available, you could try booting the original PC from a bootable CD using either e.g. Bart or Knoppix, just be aware however that everytime you power up the HDD in question it could potentially further jeopardise your data.

If you've overwritten the Vista partition with Ubuntu, then this isn't easily recoverable as you may not be able to see the Vista partition at all if the MBR is overwritten. Try the technique suggested above, or more likely to work you could try a software recovery tool such as ParetoLogic Data Recovery (http://www.paretologic.com/products/datarecovery/index.aspx). Not a bad tool but you will need to pay a few quid for it, although I've used it to recover data in some very bleak situations before now so it's worth the cost if your data is worth saving.

If you've installed Ubuntu in a separate partition and marked the Vista partition as unbootable, then possibly, by using either the slave disk mounting technique or software recovery.

If you've dual-boot installed the PC in the wrong order, then it might be as simple as editting boot.ini in the root of C: to give you options for both Vista and Ubuntu.

Good luck with recovering this. If all else fails and your data is valuable enough to justify the cost, you could always take the drive to a professional data recovery agency but that will be damn expensive.

All of this is of course assuming that you don't have recent backups of your data, which would enable you to simply reinstall Vista and then restore your data ;)

BTW - for playing around with a different OS, I suggest running it as a VM under Vista, using e.g. the free and surprisingly useful MS Virtual PC (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc/default.mspx), much easier than dual-booting these days :)

[Banished Angel]

I did write over the Vista partition with Ubuntu 8.04
Also, i have not had anything backed up. Even the Vista OS was OEM so i don't have a disk to boot from. I didn't have anything particularly valuable on there, it's just the thought of every file i had being deleted..

Thank you for you help, jaketo.

[emike55]

Are you sure you over wrote the vista partition? I had a similar problem with this computer. The linux boot loader that came with the Linux I was using didn't work well with how Vista boots (Vista uses a different boot loader than XP or previous windows). Basically I just needed to fix the MBR and vista would boot up just fine, just that alienates your linux partition.

The MBR can be fixed rather easily...well it was a pain for this computer since I wasn't given the official Vista install disk. Basically if you have an actual Vista install disk there is an option to repair the MBR as soon as you pop it in. If you don't have the actual disk you can find it online, you don't need the serial code or anything like that to just repair the MBR.

It would be more helpful to know exactly what you did when it happened. Were you trying to resize the vista partition?

[Banished Angel]

I have the serial number for installing vista, but i do not have a disc with vista on it. Where could i find a copy of windows vista home premium without having to buy it?

As to what i did: I was testing out Ubuntu, and i liked it, so i decided to go ahead and install it. What i didn't do, however, was partition the drive beforehand. So i went ahead and did an install of Ubuntu, and wrote over everything on the hard drive.

Right now I am using Ubuntu 8.04 until i find a fix.

[jaketo]

I have the serial number for installing vista, but i do not have a disc with vista on it. Where could i find a copy of windows vista home premium without having to buy it?

Speak to the supplier of your PC and ask them for a new CD copy for the OEM OS that was preinstalled on your PC, or to reimage your drive for you back to the factory default as it was supplied.

This is perfectly well within the licensing structure from MS for OEM software so the supplier shouldn't kick up too much fuss about it.

[Psycho]

http://neosmart.net/blog/2008/windows-vista-recovery-disc-download/

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=C7D4BC6D-15F3-4284-9123-679830D629F2&displaylang=en#RelatedLinks

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=a45652b1-e838-420a-b065-83960458e2ec&DisplayLang=en

Jake would these be of any help ?

[emike55]

If he didn't free up space then partitioned and installed ubuntu there is no hope for recovering vista really. Oh well there goes my idea, both Jaketo and psycho have good suggestions. Jaketo has the right way to do it, but often the most time consuming and painful lol. Psycho has the quick and easy way to do it.

[jaketo]

Craig!!!! :D

It's important to differentiate between having the installation media for software and having the right (licence) to use it. As the PC was bought with an OEM license, BA has the right to use the software (on the PC it was supplied with) but he lacks the media. This could be obtained from the original supplier, but they might charge for the privilege.

The three links Psycho has posted would provide the media that BA is missing and I think remian within MS licensing, so all is good.

Regarding your computer BA, from your description it's safe to say that your bootable Vista installation is as good as gone, but your data should still be easily recoverable if you use the technique of mounting the drive as a slave in a second computer and using a data recovery tool as I describe above.

Ubuntu has overwritten the partition information for the Vista partition which makes the Vista partition unbootable and invisible, but given that Vista is huge and Ubuntu is small, Ubuntu is unlikely to have actually physically overwrriten everything on the Vista partition so some of the data will still be there for recovery.

[emike55]

You have even more problems than that Jaketo, since linux uses ext or ext2 format most commonly. So basically what I am saying is to install ubuntu he had to format the drive meaning vista is basically gone forever. Depending on how it was formatted, the data could be recoverable using advance techniques, but not by just mounting the drive and having a program scan it. At least I don't believe that would work. Lol, at that point I would've given up on it. Formatting is suppose to destroy all data on the drive. Of course I don't know if it is done bit by bit or just the tables are overwritten. I guess that would be the difference between a quick format and normal format, or that's what I believe.

[jaketo]

Formatting is suppose to destroy all data on the drive

Yeah, right ;)

In very simple terms, when you delete a file from a drive, to save time the OS basically just unreserves the space allocated for that file (techncailly by deleting the first letter of the filename). Basic formatting does the same thing but with all the files on the drive. You can't see them as their allocated space is unreserved, but until the data is overwritten completely with other data it remains potentially damn easy to recover, even if the drive was formatted with a different file system.

This is why I have a nice man come to my office once every three months with a lorry built around a hugely powerful shredding machine which reduces all the drives from any decommissioned servers, PCs etc I may have to something that resembles metallic rice :D

[emike55]

lol, I knew that about deleting but I thought the low level formatting that linux uses actually reset the bits.

[Banished Angel]

Okay, I used the xp disc from my old computer, so right now i have Windows xp Professional running. I got the drivers for the video card and audio working just fine. There is one problem however, my internet card is not being recognized. I cannot connect to the internet. I have tried everything i can think of, but nothing seems to work. The default driver is a Microsoft driver from 2001. My internet connection is working just fine, as i am posting this from the same computer (running Ubuntu). I'm almost positive it's a driver issue, but i have no idea how to fix it.

[jaketo]

BA, how does your PC connect to your modem/router?

Assuming your on broadband, is it via a USB connection to a USB modem, or via a CAT5 ('network') cable to an ADSL router?

[Banished Angel]

I connect using an Ethernet cable running through a cable modem. The modem itself is a telephone and an internet modem. When i was running Vista, i used:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareDownloadIndex?softwareitem=pv-61422-1&lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&lang=en&os=2093&product=3554326

My internet itself is 10M cable internet from Mediacom.

[jaketo]

Good (USB is for peripherals and MP3 player, not networking ;))

I'm thinking it's the driver for your Network Adaptor (NIC) under Windows XP, which should really easy to remedy, the tricky part may be to identify the NIC itself so you know which drivers to use.

One thing to try first though is to look in Device Manager and see if there's already any Network Adaptors listed. If so, you could try uninstalling them and then 'Scan for Hardware Changes' under Device Manager.

Under Device Manager you may also see a generic NIC under 'Unknown Devices'. If there are any, uninstall them and any NICs listed under Ethernet Adaptors and then 'Scan for Hardware Changes' again.

It's a strange quirk of XP that sometimes if it doesn't get it right first time, it will have two entires for the NIC in Device Manager. The entry under 'Unknown Devices' is the card itself, but will be listed as disabled or having an error, and Windows will also put a phantom NIC under Ethernet adaptors and it's this one that Windows tries to talk to but gets nowhere.

Basically, cleaning them out and putting it back in properly should do the trick. Windows will probably have a driver for your card (and once correctly identified Windows Update may have a more up-to-date driver as well) but if not we'll need to work out what kind of NIC it is (Ubuntu may tell you?) and locate and load the driver for it manually.

[Banished Angel]

I did what you said, and the driver under network adapter was: "1394 Network Adapter"

There were also three other drivers under "Other"

"Other PCI Bridge Device"
"PCI Simple Communications Controller"
"SM Bus Controller"

I uninstalled the driver and under network adapters and did a scan and it came back no problem. I uninstalled the three under other and they all came back and said there was an error and they might not work correctly.

[emike55]

lol, you should not have deleted those three other ones. Those are not related to the NIC.

[Banished Angel]

I didn't delete them, i got them back..

And the driver linux uses is "forcedeth"

[emike55]

You need to look up your NIC manufacturer, they will be able to provide the proper drivers for your specific card. To do this check out this site. http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000500.htm

Probably the easiest way to actually tell what NIC you have is from just opening up the case but the system information may give it to you also. I know my system information wasn't very descriptive.

[jaketo]

BA, what model/make of PC do you have?

The NIC's probably embedded on the motherboard and so should be able to work it from that.

[Banished Angel]

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c01151737&lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&product=3554326&lang=en

That should be specific enough.

[jaketo]

BA, if you have no objections, could you PM me a screencap of Device Manager on your PC, with the 'Ethernet Adaptors', 'Other Devices' and 'Unknown Devices' catergories expanded.

[emike55]

Assuming you have 32-bit XP this should be what you are looking for then.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_winxp_15.24.html

GeForce 6150SE nForce 430 is what is on your M2N68-LA Asus board sooo...that should be perfect for you there =).

[jaketo]

BA, from your screencap, I'm saying the following -

Other PCI Bridge Device - this is the on-board NIC.
PCI Simple Communications Controller - this is a modem.
SM Bus controller - Nothing to worry about! ;)

All of these should be taken care of by the correct chipset driver. emike's URL above is good, just download, install and reboot and it should sort itself out :D

For the modem, it might be picked up by Windows Update instead, or you could just disable it from within Device Manager if you're not using it.

[Banished Angel]

Thank you for the link emike, everything works perfectly now. Thank you for your help as well, jaketo. On a side note, i can not get Adobe flash player to install. It says i have insufficient disk space (5000 kb).

[jaketo]

Get a bigger disk ;)

Comedy aside, how much space does you disk think it has left? How did you repartition it when you reinstalled your computer?

[Banished Angel]

I installed win xp on Local Disk H. I'm using 9.41 GB and have 278 GB free. My disk knows it has that much free, as i have installed many applications since flash player failed.

[jaketo]

S'weird :confused:

I can only think that it has something to do with the unconventional partitioning you're using i.e. disk H:\ etc, and maybe Adobe Flash player is looking to write something to a drive that is abnormally small on your computer for some reason.

Where are your temp= and tmp= system variables pointing currently? They might be defaulting to a small partition and Adobe flash is trying to use it to decompress itself before installing or something along those lines..?

[Banished Angel]

flash is trying to install in: H:\WINDOWS\system32\Macromed\Flash

and the install gets halfway through before saying:
"You do not have sufficient disk space to complete this installation. Please free 5000 KB and try again."

As for your question, i don't quite understand what you are asking.

[emike55]

Weird things do happen when you don't use C: as your root. I bet it will have something to do with that. As for a solution I am not quite sure how to go about that. When you open the installer through dos you can pass special arguments to the installer, perhaps one of them is for such situations. Perhaps an ignore disk space errors, however trying to find a specific documentation about this arguments will be a pain.

[jaketo]

Sorry BA, was dead tired when I wrote my last post ;)

Windows defines a number of environment variables which other programs can use. Some of them are very legacy but they're still valid.

If you examine the Properties -> Advanced -> Environment Variables of your computer, you'll see them.

Most of them are System variables and apply to every user. A few are user specific and TMP and TEMP are two of these.

TMP and TEMP tell Windows and programs running under Windows where to put temporary files. Usually by default they'll point to somewhere obscure in the depths of your user profile. Personally I always create a folder called C:\Temp and edit these variables to point at that folder can I can manage it more efficiently.

As for you Adobe installation issue, it is indeed because of your unconventional disk namings. Go and read this article (http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb406903&sliceId=1) and follow the instructions given, and all will be well :D

[Banished Angel]

Thanks jaketo, i was able to use my flash drive to finish the installation.

On a side note, is there any chance i can change my default drive from H to C without losing any data or causing any damage?

[jaketo]

With knowing the exact configuration of your PC and it's mulitple OSes etc it would be hard to say for sure, but the likelihood of that going very badly wrong and your system never booting again (again) is very high :)

I'd leave it as it is if you can live with it.