Accidentally deleted OS with acronis OS Selector!
I had a sata hd with 2 windows xp installations, one for work and one for experimenting with. Windows selector showed 3 different installations to choose from when there was only 2 so I thought I'd give the acronis login manager a try. After installing acronis login manager there was still 3 installs to choose from. One was a duplicate listing for the second xp installation. A friend that used acronis before said to just delete the one entry which was what he called just a shortcut. After clicking the big red x and deleting the entry, there was just one xp install showing, which was the second experimental install. The acronis boot manager deleted the whole xp OS from the first partition. It left some folders and various files behind, but the windows operating system was gone.
The ironic thing is that I was going to get the acronis true image to bachup everything when I was done, I can't believe this has happened. Is there any way to get my xp operating sytem files back or are they gone for good? I was hoping there was a undo button somewhere but if there is I haven't been able to find it. If nothing else I would just like to recover the lost email files and anything else like docs and stuff as I can simply reinstall xp again but I don't want to do anything to the drive until I'm certain there's no hope of retrieving anything at all. I was using Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0, and windows xp home edition. I hope someone can help me, if my husband finds out it won't be pretty. Thank you so much for any information at all.
Lisa
Thank you for your response, I can't get a screenshot because the DD was removed with everything else.
Can you show an example of what you deleted so I know exactly what you did? ....... I'm sorry but I'm not totally sure what you mean. Are you asking what I picked in the acronis os selector, as in the os's showed on the main screen? Or exactly what files are now missing on the hd?
What did you use to determine that "some folders and various files" were still there? Did you browse with DD? ................... I used both the second copy of xp on the second partiton and also a linux livecd to see what was on the drive. The only folders left in the deleted os's partition were " AMD - bootwiz - doucuments and settings - program files - recycler - system volume information. "
I didn't know if one way would show more information or not, I figured I'd try it anyway.
Thanks
Browse into the BOOTWIZ folder and check if there are any sub-folder contents. If you find any, please post the contents (for example, Windows). Sometimes OSS will move the Windows system folders into the BOOTWIZ folder (or a sub-folder). Are the Documents and settings and Program Files folders you still see on the partition empty?
I was asking what you picked in OSS. Exactly what steps you did when you deleted the OS entry.
If you made a DD CD you could boot to that and then take a picture with a digital camera or cell phone.
Here are the contents of the bootwiz folder >
Directory of C:\BOOTWIZ\
C:\BOOTWIZ\x
C:\BOOTWIZ\CHEKFILE
C:\BOOTWIZ\UNINSTAL
C:\BOOTWIZ\UNINSTAL\x
C:\BOOTWIZ\
==========
context.oss 1 KB
Total 1 file(s); Size: 613 Byte(s)
C:\BOOTWIZ\x
==================
boot.ini 1 KB
ntdetect.com 46 KB
ntldr 244 KB
Total 3 file(s); Size: 298066 Byte(s)
C:\BOOTWIZ\CHEKFILE
==================
boot.ini 1 KB
io.sys 1 KB
ntldr 1 KB
Total 3 file(s); Size: 0 Byte(s)
C:\BOOTWIZ\UNINSTAL
==================
Total 0 file(s); Size: 0 Byte(s)
C:\BOOTWIZ\UNINSTAL\x
===========================
boot.ini 1 KB
ntdetect.com 46 KB
ntldr 244 KB
Total 3 file(s); Size: 298063 Byte(s)
Total 4 folder(s); 10 file(s)
Total files size: 1 MB; 583 KB; 596742 Bytes
Are the Documents and settings and Program Files folders you still see on the partition empty? ................... No, there are files in both, several gigabytes in the program files folder. Although in the documents and settings folder some of the important files are missing, like the email folders, stuff like that.
I was asking what you picked in OSS. Exactly what steps you did when you deleted the OS entry. ..................... On the initial screen where there are a list of os's to pick from, on the top are several icons to choose from. I was told to just highlight the extra os entry and click the big red X on the top row. I clicked it and that was it.