A way to recover an OS after a quick format?

Bigdogbmx

Bigdogbmx

Bigdogbmx

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25 Sep 2003
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Ive managed to get myself in a dumb situation and im hoping someone here can help. Ive formatted and half installed XP onto a laptop, and realised that the XP product key isnt stuck on the bottom where it should be. Now I have a PC with half a windows install and no CD Key to finish the job. Does anyone know of a way to either recover whatever file holds the key info, or get the origional install back running so I can find the key using some software or something?

Any help on this is much appreciated, Im pretty stuck myself.
 
Ouch, if you'd just formatted the drive then it would be (relatively) easy to get back your data, but once you start writing over the sectors with new data it becomes way more difficult to retrieve.

Unless you've got a few grand to spend getting the drive professionally looked at, e.g. companies such as Vogon, then you're gonna struggle getting anything meaningful from it using personal tools.
 
If you've not done anything but a quick format it should be easy to sort, Get Data Back was the program I used for a memory card someone had managed to format with wedding pics on. Basically if you haven't written to the rive since the format then don't, whack it in another box as a slave drive and it should be able to get back most if not all of your data, make sure the location it outputs your data to has enough space and for gods sake don't use the same drive as the output path! Forgot to mention it's not free but the demo will let you see the files it can recover so at least you know if it's worth buying.
 
Quite frankly I think your in the ****.

You can use data recovery programs to retrieve most of the data, but you'll never be able to recover a whole Windows installation. Without the Windows installation, the magicjellybean keyfinder won't work.

Good luck dude, you'll need it.

Burnsy
 
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