[NickH]

I've seen this topic has been covered before, but I think my circumstances are different from previous ones dealt with, so I'm hoping someone can help me out here.

Having been forced to use the System Recovery CD on my Philips Freevents PC (running XP Media Centre Edition 2005), the system generally works okay but with the following problems:
1) 111GB of the 250GB HD is inaccesible
2) System not as fast as before (due perhaps to problem 1?)
3) Cannot delete certain directories & files sitting in the 'My Old Disk Structure' directory that the system made for me when the Recovery DIsk ran

Can anyone point me in the right direction?
Best wishes,
Nick

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Hello,
Sorry we missed you. We are quite busy as you can imagine. Are you still wanting assistance with your issue?

makai

[makai]

Hello,
Sorry we missed you. We are quite busy as you can imagine. Are you still wanting assistance with your issue?

makai

[NickH]

Yes please - it would be great to get some assistance from you with this..
Nick

[makai]

This may be difficult to fix without doing another full system recovery as what it might take is a full reformat of the hard drive. There is not much information on this laptop. What model Philips Freevents do you own?

[NickH]

The machine is actually a full blown PC, not a laptop - a Philips Freevents MT2400 Pentium4 3.20GHz with 1GB RAM

I believed it was running XP Media Centre Edition 2005 when purchased, but having checked the System Properties, it says it is running Media Centre Edition Version 2002 Service Pack 3. Could this have anything to do with having run the Philips rescue disk?

What other information do you need?

Nick

[makai]

I believed it was running XP Media Centre Edition 2005 when purchased, but having checked the System Properties, it says it is running Media Centre Edition Version 2002 Service Pack 3

According to THIS, MCE 2005 is based on MCE 2002... so System Properties is correct. Read the article to find how to check your version of MCE.

Could this have anything to do with having run the Philips rescue disk?

No.

What other information do you need?

I guess I need to know if you're willing to wipe the machine, format the drive, and reinstall. If so, we need to know what harddrive you have so we can find the manufactures utility to wipe it. If you open Device manager and expand Disk Drives... what's the model number of the drive?

[NickH]

The disk drive is a Maxtor 6l250S0 IDE running driver version 5.1.2535.0 from 2001 (which seems quite old..)

So are you saying a reformat is the only option? If you feel that's what's got to be done, then so be it. I have an external drive that I can back up onto. I guess we go for it..
Nick

[makai]

I think the best way to fix this is to reformat the drive. There may be other ways to accomplish this, but it may require other software like Partition magic, or other such hard disk managers. However, since you also have a problem with Windows running freaky, it might be better to just start over and be done with it.

If your machine has a floppy drive, you can use the Seagate disc wizard from HERE. Just choose Free User, wait the allotted time, and download the application to your desktop. This app is no longer availabe, but it's one of the best for Seagates and Maxtors. This app will require 2 blank floppies. The app will prompt you as you create them. By the way, I have a tutorial I can upload if you'll be using floppies. I may need to rewrite it a bit as I originally wrote it for someone else.

If you don't have a floppy drive, then you can use Seagate's disc wizard from HERE... it's actually Acronis. I believe the application will allow you to create a bootable CD to be used for formatting, or it may create a CD that will have options to format, plus more things. I have never used it, but you can read up on it at the Seagate site.

Let me know how you want to proceed. And, yes... back up your data, bookmarks, address book, etc. Please verify the data once backed up... always a good idea.

[The Skeptic]

Please forgive me for jumping in, makai. Is windows updated in this computer? If the installation cd does not include sp-1, at least, then the computer will show 137 GB only out of the total volume.

[makai]

Please forgive me for jumping in, makai. Is windows updated in this computer? If the installation cd does not include sp-1

No problem jumping in. In post #5 the OP specified SP3.

[The Skeptic]

Yes, you are right. Sorry.

[makai]

Yes, you are right. Sorry.

No problem. I thought I remembered the OP mentioned SP3, but even had to recheck myself. Thanks!

[NickH]

OP? That must be me! What does it stand for - something not too impolite I trust..

Just to let you know that I now have the Seagate Bootable Disc made and am going through the machine backing stuff up - I'm not making a complete copy of the HD. My concerns are how to make sure that I reinstall everything I need - do you know a good way to catalogue programmes, other than writing them all down? Also concerned about reconnecting to my Orange Livebox - I'd like to avoid getting forced into using the Orange utilities which are overbearing.

What's next?
Nick

[makai]

OP? That must be me! What does it stand for - something not too impolite I trust..

OP=Originating Poster or Original Poster... commonly used in forums.

My concerns are how to make sure that I reinstall everything I need - do you know a good way to catalogue programmes, other than writing them all down?

There are many programs to do this... WinAudit, System Information for Windows, Aida32 (old but great... actually the best as far as I'm concerned and it's stand alone... no installation). Everest took over Aida32, but crippled it a bit... Aida32 is better in a lot of ways. I recommend using it for this.

Download Aida32
Extract to a folder somewhere
Launch Aida32 program... looks like a computer icon with an "i"
Go to File>Preferences>Report... uncheck everything except "Ask the user" (output method)... click OK
Go to Report>Report wizard>Next
Choose Custom Selection>Next
Uncheck "Aida32-Report"... this will deselect everything in the list
Click on plus sign next to "Software" , then put a check mark in "Installed Programs" and "Licenses".... note that not all licenses are captured... no program I know of can do this.
Click on Next, select "Plain Text", click on Finish, ... Aida32 will generate a text document. Click on "Save to file" and save it somewhere.

Also concerned about reconnecting to my Orange Livebox - I'd like to avoid getting forced into using the Orange utilities which are overbearing.

Not sure how to handle this as I don't use this particular piece of hardware. You might search Google for a way to go about this.

What's next?

Do you know how to reformat the hard drive using the Seagate software, or do you need the tutorial?

[NickH]

I think I'd like to be following instructions on his, so yes a tutorial would e good. I coudn't find anything like that on the Seagate site.

I'll follow the Aida32 route - thanks for that.
Nick