The weirdest WinXP issue I ever encountered - advice greatly appreciated

[Lukas]

First off the PC setup is a EVGA motherboard, amd 64 single core, pcie nvidia videocard, audigy 2 soundcard, 2 g corsair ram, and 160gig sata HD in raid0 setup on WinXP SP3.

Before I explain the problem let me tell you how I got to it. I updated my soundcard drivers and after doing so, about 2 days after the fact, I started getting a blue screen saying something about irq_driver_value not equal to or either less or greater not sure which and I should check any newly installed drivers or hardware and uninstall.

What I did was I rolled back my soundcard driver to the previous one and I was still getting the bluescreen error with the same message. I ignored it for a bit since it only happend once in a while, but then it got so bad that I couldnt even get into windows, only safemode. At this point from safemode I completely uninstalled my video and soundcard drivers and I still was getting the bluescreen. I then took out the battery to reset the bios.

This is where it got really bad. I forgot that I had a raid0 setup and the bios by default was not using that configuration but trying to load windows from a sata1, sata2 setup. I kept getting a ntldr is missing press alt ctr dlt to restart message. Now I dont know if this relates in anyway to bios going to default or what, but I got so frustrated I decided to just format. During the format I realized I have to change my bios settings to raid setup, so I let the format finish, and went to bios, changed the settings, and lo and behold windows xp loaded.

Before it loaded though I should mention windows ran a check disk and it said it found some errors and fixed them, and then for about 2 hours it did this scan thing where it replaced some security id on every file on the pc with a new default security id.

Once windows loaded I didnt get what I was seeing....the c drive had been formatted, but here was windows, with all of my files, and not a megabyte less on the c drive. But this is the big problem now, in windows there is no taskbar, internet explorer wont run, and the option to copy any file to either a usb memory stick or a cd is not possible. I cant even paste a file from a folder to the desktop, the paste option is greyed out after i choose copy.

This is where I need help. Does anyone know what the heck is going on, why this is happening, and if there is any possible way I can copy over my files (which i can still open and run, like all my mp3s play and all my documents and photos will open) or if there is anything I can do to fix windows to operate normaly. As I write this my computer is in the shop where the repair guy can't figure out the problem as well.

[pink_tractorbeam]

I'm slightly confused by this.

You had all the hassle with your soundcard and receiving blue screens etc; and eventually decided to format. Correct?

You performed the format but forgot to specify the HDD configuration in the BIOS, specified it afterwards and XP booted. Thought a bit weird why chkdsk ran after a format...

This is where I get confused:

Once windows loaded I didnt get what I was seeing....the c drive had been formatted, but here was windows, with all of my files, and not a megabyte less on the c drive

Do you mean to say that despite formatting your hard drive, when you boot into Windows it's not indicative of the format - therefore all of your files/software (pictures, games etc) are still there despite the drive being formatted?

It indicates to me that something didn't go as it should have in formatting the drive.

Have you tried a repair installation?

My suggestion is that if you were willing the format the drive once, try it again, wipe the drive clean of everything and set up XP as new, with no software on it - if you have to set your HDD as a slave in a working computer, backup everything you want, do that beforehand.

It seems to me as though a format wasn't done - from chkdsk attempting to run at first boot after the 'format' to (from what I can gather from your post) all your previous files being there.

Good luck!

I hope that helps

Thanks