HELP! Can I save my hard drive(and an anti-liberal library)?

I made a big computer mistake ^ | 3/30/02 | Myself

[Diddle E. Squat]

Can't fire up my computer, says "error loading explorer.exe, you must reinstall windows". But the restore CD disk brings up a message that I will lose all data on my hard drive. Am seeking a fix that saves the data(I have over 500 articles saved in favorites or as text docs, would hate to lose all that). Running Windows ME on a home desktop PC(e-machine), but my only current internet access now is here at the library. If anyone has advice that I can take home to work on a fix, I'd be greatly indebted to them.

Here's what happened. Went to a website this morning looking for Eagles lyrics, and the dang thing tried to install that cursed Comet Curser. I've got Zone Alarm and Adsubtract SE, so I blocked it from recontacting the internet to finish installation. Then tried to get rid of it, searched my computer for files with the word 'comet'(computer froze, which sometimes happens when I do a file search, and the only way to restart was a power shutoff. When it came back up it did the usual scan disk for errors, but since the 'cluster' check can take hours, I cancelled it). Came back with comet.dll(which the PC would not allow me to delete, since it said it was a systems file that windows was using) and another folder icon with a cometdt TMP file. I disconnected my internet connection and several times I would delete this last file and then clear the trash bin, restart and do a new search, and the file would reappear again. I got the idea that the comet.dll was regenerating a new file for each one removed.

Reconnected the internet connection(high-speed cable), and restarted several times, each time a request would be made to contact the internet and finish installation of the comet curser. Each request had a different file name, so blocking didn't work, and every new window opened would launch a request. Went to ZoneAlarm page and it showed CMDNINST.EXE as a file trying to do an install. So I went to my files, located it, and deleted it to trash, then emptied the trash. Each restart would start a 'improper shutdown scan disk for errors', which I would quit(takes too long), but the last time after I quit I got a e-machine screen saying 'error loading explorer.exe', 'you must reinstall windows'. So I shutdown, put in the first of two restore CD's, and restarted. I get two options, 1) reinstall windows millenium edition(which soon brings up the message that I'll loose all information on the hard drive if I continue) or 2) boot reinstall manual?(I forgot the exact wording, but it brings me to an A>, and since I obviously know very little about computers, that puts me at the end of my rope).

So what should I do?

[Pokey78]

To quote Mr. Blutarsky: "If I were you, I'd start drinking heavily!"

[zchip]

Buy yourself a new hard disk and install it as a primary. Then reinstall your OS on the new disk. Make your current hard disk the secondary and you should be able to access it as the "D:" drive. Copy your data from the D: drive back to the C: drive.

[Helix]

If you have a start up floppy, insert that before boot to get to the dos prompt(you might be able to do a safe mode start by pressing a function key- often, but not always, the f7 key) and copy files from the DOS prompt to other floppies.

You can also go to MS help site to get specific help for Windows ME.

[dennisw]

Everyone should have a spare hard drive or two lying around. You may beg an old one from a friend or computer shop. Say an old 3 gigabyte one.

One way to solve your problem is take out your hard drive. Put in another one and load your e-machine restore disk onto it. Then put in your ailing hard drive as a slave hard drive. Once you are up and running with these teo hard drives you can drag the files you want to keep onto the master hard drive. When you're finished take out both hard drives and do your complete re-install on your ailing hard drive.

[Chad Fairbanks]

If you have another OS, like a previous version (98, 2000, 95, NT, whatever) try and install that on your machine as a dual boot machine, if possible. Don't know if it would work or not... so, that being the case, I'd get a new hard drive as suggested above, and make your current master drive a slave, with the new drive the master...

In the meantime, start drinking heavily :0)

[ClearCase_guy]

This is not gospel,(I'm a UNIX guy, not a Windows guy), so do not act on this unless someone else can verify:

I have re-installed both Windows 98 and Windows 2000 from the ground up and the computer has told me that I will lose all data. But that has not happened. My guess is that since I was re-installing the OS, the old data on the hard-drive was still visible after the install. Had I been switching to a new File System on new OS, I'm sure I would have lost it all.

For the future: burning data on to a CD is excellent protection against system crashes. It won't help you recover a lost system but most systems become obsolete so quickly that (IMO) struggling to recover a lost system is not worth it. But data is different. So long as I have my data on a CD, I don't much care what happens to the computer.

[Riley]

Buy yourself a new hard disk and install it as a primary. Then reinstall your OS on the new disk. Make your current hard disk the secondary and you should be able to access it as the "D:" drive. Copy your data from the D: drive back to the C: drive.

I concur. Safest way to retreive your data. There will be instructions on the top of both the new and old drives about setting the jumpers to master and slave. New disk should be the master, old one should be the slave. Depending on what operating system you're installing, you may have to use F-Disk to set up a partition on the new drive and mark it 'active'.

My apologies if you already know all of this...

[Looking4Truth]

Yep, if there are no backups this is as good a plan as any.

I don't know about Windows Millenium edition, so I can't say whether or not the explorer.exe file could be extracted from a .CAB file or not without doing a complete re-install. I got burned out on supporting windoze a couple of years ago, so I haven't kept up.

How many versions of Windoze are out there now? Too many if you ask me.

[TomGuy]

Several things:

Are you running a virus checker? That webpage may have given you a trojan or worm virus.

If you haven't already done so, shut your machine completely off (not reboot). Then turn it back on, and see if it will load Windows.

I'm not sure with WinME, but do you have a "start up floppy"? With Win98 and previous versions, you can boot from the floppy. That way, you could at least copy your files you need to save onto floppies.

Is your hard drive partitioned? If it is partitioned, you could copy your "keep files" temporarily onto the partition drive that is the non-Windows drive.

[randog]

My suggestions are found in posts #3 and #4, but once you get your 'puter back in order I'd look at backing up your valuable docs with a CDR, ZIP drive, etc. In fact, if you use the suggestion in post #3 you can always use that second drive for backups.

[JennysCool]

Agree completely, Chip ... Had a similar problem, bit the bullet and got a secondary hard drive, and that did the trick -- plus, now I can't imagine what I did without all that extra storage space! It's a great investment, crisis or not ... Good luck, Diddle E.!

[Squantos]

I have one of the 40 Gig Buslink external hard drives that I store all my data on. Key data is also dropped into 650 meg files for CD burning of the data as it's now cheapest and best for my needs as a back up to the external hard drive and the one in the laptop.

Keeps my puter running fast and uncluttered pretty much and if I get slammed like you did with some dll I don't want and "restore" in ME won't work then I just reload the configuration disk and start fresh. A custom CD burned with all my key programs like popup killer, anti-virus from grisoft (free), ZoneAlarm pro, and etc etc etc lets me recustomize the laptop fast if such happens.

Just my CYA suggestions that have worked for me........I had to lose a lot of key data also before I took action to prevent such loss.

Hope ya win yer battle !

Stay Safe !

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

For Heaven's sake let the scandisk finish! A normal boot should proceed from there. You can create problems with the boot sequence when you keep interrupting it. When it finishes, let the system boot and let it install the Comet Cursor. Worry about that crap later. What would you prefer? Comet Cursor on a functioning system or the piece if sh!t you have now?

[green team 1999]

ditto,i use zip drives 100MB (iomega)and can storage lots of stuff and my hardrive stays fast and free.

[Hell to pay]

Since you have Windows ME, you could try holding down the f8 key while booting, and choose to go into safe mode, where you can try to restore your computer settings to an earlier date. This has saved me a couple of times. Earlier versions of Windows do not have that feature.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

"Is your hard drive partitioned? "

How exactly do you run Windows on a drive that isn't? You can't install jacksh-t on a drive that isn't partitioned.

[TomGuy]

Most drives from the factory are a single partition - C.

You can partition it further, such as D, E, F, etc.

Windows can be installed on any existing partition, although C is the most common. Usually Windows (98 and previous) ignores the other partitions and the data on them.

The point is, if there are more than just the C partition, and Windows is on the C partition, the data can be moved to a temporary location on another partition.

[Tree of Liberty]

Windows will see the other partitions and assign drive letters so long as the partitions are formated with either fat16, fat32, or NTFS.

The OP might want to try four partitions. 1)OS 2)swap file 3)programs 4)data

Having the swap file parssed out is especially helpful in NTFS systems when you try to do a physical scan with Scandisk or Norton Disk Doctor.

[texas booster]

By now I am sure that your problems are solved. Having fought with Comet Cursor, I no linger use any website that tries to install it. Audio Galaxy may be an OK site, but no more for me or anyone else i know.

With Comet, let it install. Give it bogus information at every turn. (anyone@comet.com, etc.) Reboot and then delete it from Control Panel. Ignore every warning and get rid of it.

Please go out and buy a new 7200 rpm drive and install it into your emachines system. Trust me. Your hard drive will fail. I know more about emachines quality than I care to admit. In anycase, 40 gigs for $100 is the going rate in our area for a new drive. Then copy all important information to the new drive. If you have room, buy a CD burner or get a USB burner.

Comet Cursor is one of the most worthless programs ever to imitate a virus i have ever seen.