odd occurance

[Dan]

I have 4 systems networked. I never surf with them all on, usually will do a virus/trojan check of the host before booting the clients.
A few days ago, when I tried to boot my #2 client, it wouldn't boot, said there were several files missing (mostly .vxd files). I tried safemode, and booting from a floppy, and with cd support. It wouldn't accept the scanreg /restore command, it kept telling me it was a bad command. The only way I finally "got in" was to allow a re-install of windows 98.
After the install, all of my settings were gone, and the desktop was default green with default icons. There was a second windows directory labelled "windows000". The strange thing was the old windows directory had only three empty folders in it: user, data, and backup.
While this posed no problem because I only keep this system as a "reference", with no programs installed except WinonCD and Microangelo, and only the cd burner as an "extra" device...I just ran fdisk and started all over. (The program folders were in the new window000 directory, but the programs were not installed).
BUT, what could have caused this? I have done parallel installs before, but never lost everything in the windows folder?
no viruses, no trojans....
the other two systems are also clean.....

[galaxian]

Look for a file c:\Scandisk.log

Scandisk may have "fixed" your file system.

http://users.iafrica.com/c/cq/cquirke/scandisk.htm

[Dan]

I ran fdisk, and reinstalled windows...so there is nothing in scandisk.log
I am more interested in ideas about why this might have happened

[HAL9000]

When you re-installed... you forgot to rename the installation directory back to C:\WINDOWS from what the installer defaulted to C:\WINDOWS.000. In this situation, you should have been able to reverse the process by following these steps. (http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=38140)

[Dan]

thanks Hal9k-
of course it's too late now, but I have copied your directions and filed them away.
I guess I was in a panic and didn't notice that the installer was creating a new directory....
I hope there isn't a next time, but I'll be better armed....
BUT shouldn't the old windows directory have had all the old files in it?
after the parallel install there were only three blank folders in the Windows directory....

[HAL9000]

Yes... they should have been all there... so I don't think it would have helped for this particular situation... but at least there is some ammo for the next time to try.

[Dan]

thanks Hal9k
I guess that's what has me wondering...why were there only 3 folders, and why were they empty??
I know it's all speculation at this point, but what would've caused it?

[HAL9000]

The missing files were probably something to do with why the machine wouldn't boot to begin with. Now what caused it? Careless user, malicious user, virus, computer gremlins, thats hard to say.

[Dan]

exactly
the strangest part is that this machine is only used by me...very infrequently...it's never online without a firewall, and none of the other 3 on the network have a virus. my vote is for the gremlins.