My OS Crashed

Can you help?

LOn

On Friday, April 30, after downloading several MP3s from my LAN, I received the error message that my computer was running out of hard disk space. At the time I was running Windows 95 and dual-booting Windows NT Workstation.

My hard disk holds about 3 gigs. NT was in a secondary partition called drive H (host for C). To save space, I deleted the contents of drive H.

Later that day, weird things started happening. Windows were drifting across my screen and the icons had disappeared from my taskbar tray.

On the advice of a friend, I rebooted my computer to make sure that deleting drive H had taken effect. Before an OS would boot, DOS gave me the error message, "Insert bootable disk, press any key to continue."

Everything had been wiped off my C drive (where Win95 and all my data was). After booting from a Win98 system disk, I called Dell, my computer manufacturer. Dell advised me to copy the essential boot files from the floppy disk so I could boot from my hard disk. Then they told me that my OS files had been corrupted, there was no hope of recovering my data, and to format my C drive and re-install Win95.

Wanting a second opinion, I called a very knowledgable friend. He told me to use the simple DOS switch c:\>dir /ah. I discovered a huge (2 gig) file called config.000 We determined that all my data must be in that hidden file.

So that I could use my computer, I repartitioned my hard disk. I placed the contents of the c: drive in a secondary partition, and formatted the primary partition. I then installed Win95 to the primary partition.

Win95 is now operating normally but all my data and programs are gone. I have run fdisk and there is still a large portion of memory in my secondary partition. I want to be to recover the data on my secondary partition.

Can you help? Please e-mail me: [email protected]