Well I finally did it!

I hopelessly crashed my computer.

I was trying to install the Windows 8 Preview and it did exactly what I was afraid it would do.

It started overwriting my Windows installation without asking me where I wanted to install it.

The Windows 8 install failed, so I tried the rollback option and that failed too.

So I put in my Ghost disk and tried restore my C:\ drive and that failed too.

Finally I had to go to the system restore disks that came with my computer.
That got it up and running and I can read all the stuff in my Ghost backups on my external drive.
So I can restore stuff from there, but I still have a lot of stuff to re-install.

All of my data is on my D:\ drive and wasn't effected so I haven't lost any files or anything and some of the software that I had installed there still runs.

But I've got a lot of work to do.

So I may be back with questions there are things I had installed that I can't even remember.

Does anyone know where the Google Chrome favorites are stored, I probably have them backed up it I can find them.

And I can't seem to find a restore for my desktop I had stuff there that may be lost unless I can find someplace else that it actually saved it.

Mike

If you have a backup image of your c: drive I think the chrome favs are kept in \users\youraccount\appdata\roaming\chrome maybe google. If not in there check in programdata on the root of C:. For you desktop if you have a system image you could check c:\users\youruser\desktop in the image.

HTH

NmsUK

Hi

I found the desktop stuff where you suggested and it's restoring it right now.
I'll go look for my chrome data again.

Thanks for the help.

Mike

My pleasure Mike. Good luck with the restore.

Hi again.

I just finished installing Age of Conan and Adobe Photoshop CS2.

I had to install an earlier version first because it's an upgrade and wouldn't recognize my DVD when I put it in.

Nice that I can work on both installs at the same time, I put them on different drives and Conan installed and updated while I worked on other things.

Right now I'm downloading my video drivers.

Ah! they are done.

Mike

Mike,
You left me sitting here, scratching my head with that comment that your Ghost backup didn't restore. ???

What do you think went wrong? Eh?

I've been using Ghost since 1997, without ever seeing that problem.
But then, I don't use the new GUI versions of Ghost and I never shut down Ghost after a backup till the image file is Verified.

With Ghost, I put on the brakes at ver. 11.5, which is the last DOS based version that I can run from a DOS boot disk.
I have it on CD, Flash Drive and a SD flash memory card.

My standard process is to first make sure there are NO errors on my HD. Chkdsk C: /f usually takes care of that.
Then from my DOS boot disk, I run batch files to eliminate the pagefile, old restore points and of course, Junk Files, from my C:
drive. Finally I run Ghost 11.5 and do the backup (Partition to Image) to my backup 1TB drive.
Then I run a "Check" of the backup image file and finally the acid test...... I do a restore, using the file I just created.
If everything works as planned, I wind up with a newly written C: drive with NO errors on it, NO spaces in the data and NO fragmentation. It's almost step by step identical to what I used to do on the big main-frame computer I ran for the county.

With a known-good backup "in the can" you do all sorts of wild and crazy things with your OS, knowing that if you screw it up, you can always fix it.

* Before somebody says, you can't clean up a NTFS hard drive from a DOS boot disk,,,,,,,,, OH yes I can!
My DOS boot disk ain't your daddy's boot disk! Besides Ghost 11.5, and my cleanup batch files, it also contains "NTFS4DOS", which opens up the NTFS partition so I CAN access if from a DOS prompt. Every file on the C: partition is mine to do with as I please.
On my own PC, that's not even an issue, because I still run XP-Pro on a FAT-32 hard drive, which is easily accessed from DOS.
By doing my very thorough cleanup before running Ghost, I cut over 4 gig's from the size of my backup image file.

Cheers Mate!
OT

Hi

I don't know what happened, I had already tried repair, and rollback and no luck.

So I started Ghost from my boot DVD.

It found the backup on my external drive and started the process, but after about a half hour a message came up on the screen, something like, "Ghost can't read a file, restore failed"!

I created and validated the image only about a week ago just in case I had a problem like this. And it validated it again just before it started restoring.

I finally got it back up and running by using my system image that came from Falcon Northwest.

That worked until after a couple of hours of re-installing things I decided to update my video drivers. My computer crashed again and wouldn't boot or repair.

Back to the System Image again, fortunately this only takes about 15 minutes.

This time I updated the video drivers first before I did anything else.

I got the blue screen again, but this time I was able to boot into safe mode and changed to the previous driver to the one I was trying to install and it's all working now.

I just finished installing all my Adobe software.
Now I'm going to start on the games and odds and ends.
I'm having problems installing Age of Conan, after the install I get a message that says msvcp100.dll is missing and won't start.

I just ran an installer for a C++ package that is supposed to include it.
I'll try and install AoC again after I get the rest of the stuff done.

Kind of tired I was up until about 4 am getting things up and running.

When I'm done installing everything I'm going to make a image file on my D:\ drive, where it's easy to get to, using Windows 7 backup.

Mike

Ps.

On the plus side once I got into Windows 7 and re-installed Ghost I was able to access my backups and retrieve individual files.

I'm still trying to find my Windows Live Mail address book and my Google Chrome Favorites but at least I was able to find documents etc. Most important some stuff I had on the Desktop and wan't backed up anyplace else, that was a important.
I've now copied the stuff to my D:\drive.

Anyone know where the Windows Live Mail address book is saved?

Sorry Mike, I won't use Windows Live Mail.
I had to set that beast up one time and one time was more than enough for me.
What a crappy looking program!
And doing the setup is enough to make a freight train take off down a dirt road.

I just activate 'Windows Mail' and set it up just like Outlook Express and never have any regrets.

By the way, you said something about installing Ghost into your OS drive? Did I read that right?
I have not, do not and never will do that..... install Ghost into Windows. Why?

When it's running within Windows, it does not have control of your computer, Windows does.
That can throw all sorts of Crap into the Gap, so to speak.

I learned my lesson with that, clear back in the Ghost 2002 days.
Ghost running from a DOS boot disk, is dealing only with the ones and zeros (files) on the HD and doesn't
have to deal with an OS running in the background, accessing the HD, eating up RAM, etc.

I think I mentioned this, but I'm going to say it again, , , I run Ghost 11.5, from a DOS boot disk and
never have to deal with Windows at all. As long as I make sure that my HD is free of errors, Ghost just
never fails me. The way I run Ghost also eliminates the HD Bloat that Ghost itself creates when it's installed
on the HD.
Running your backup and restore program from withing Windows is just NOT the way it should be done,
not for the greatest safety anyway.

Ok.... I quit. Sorry if this post has offended anyone.
OT.

No I have Ghost installed on my D:\Drive and my backups are on an external firewire drive.

I was running the restore from the Linux boot DVD.

I'm almost done, only a few more things to go.

And I've used Ghost many times in the past with good results.

Actually now that I'm almost done I'm kind of glad I did it this way.
My computer had so much stuff on it that I didn't need that it's running a lot better now.

I only installed the programs that I actually use. LOL

About the only thing I don't have running is Age of Conan.
I've installed several programs, Lord of the Rings Online for one that installed the software that AoC said it couldn't find do I'm gong to give it another go.

I think that Windows Live Mail client has changed since you used it.
I have three accounts on it, all on different services, Comcast, Gmail and Live.

All I had to do to set them up was type in my address and my password for each one only took 30 seconds.

Though I'm not that crazy about the interface.

Mike