XP-Vista Brawl Vista Bugs and Problems Discuss XP-Vista Brawl in the Windows Vista forums; I'm seriously freakin' out here. I knew it would happen eventually. :/ If anyone could help, please know it would be EXTREMELY helpful to my mental health... So I have ...

[jedijunk]

I'm seriously freakin' out here. I knew it would happen eventually. :/ If anyone could help, please know it would be EXTREMELY helpful to my mental health...

So I have three hard drives. I decided that I'd load XP on one, Vista on another, and put all of my files (my LIFE) on the third one. That way, I could access my stuff from both XP and Vista as I evaluated the latter.

So I used Vista for about a week (enjoying it!), then booted from the XP drive to use a program that I haven't been able to use in Vista. As XP booted, it decided that my shared drive needed to be "checked for consistency" or whatever, and it proceeded to run that blue screen scandisk thing that I sometimes (rarely) see. This time, however, it took almost two hours as it "reindexed" or whatever.

Once it finally booted into XP, I quickly noticed that about half of the files on that shared drive weren't accessible (had "blank" icons and couldn't be opened). I panicked and booted up back into Vista. Vista said that the entire DRIVE was unaccessible!

My first instinct was to format the XP partition (probably just because I was pissed at it), but I really don't think that would restore my access in Vista.

What's going on? Have I royally screwed things up?

Sorry - I'm not as much as a noob as I sound. I'm just freakin' out, so the neurons haven't started firing again yet.

Thanks SO much for absolutely ANY help anyone could provide!

Teddy

[Znod]

Hi jj:

Welcome under not so happy circumstances. I am not a technical expert by any means. So, my general approach is to take actions that should be harmless first.

If I were in your situation, then, I would try copying all your 3rd-drive files to each of the other two drives to see if they "work" any better after doing so. I assume that you did not follow through with formatting your XP drive.

There are some highly knowledgeable technical-types that frequent this forum. So, they are likely to show up and offer better advice than mine. I wish you the best of luck.

No backups of your files?

[crabby]

Sounds like the hard-drive is dying :S Both operating systems use the same format (NTFS) so they can access each other anyway. Do the blank files has size/name etc? If so, then if you can figure out what they are (if you can still access them) you can rename their extensionand they should work :P There are also programs which can restore lost data on drives... they work well even if the area has been overwritten.

crabby

[Snuffy]

If you have 3 HD's and the shared HD suddenly quit... couple of Questions"
1. did you sync #3 with Vista? or have Vista index any of the files??
2. Vista can make them unaccessable to XP.. even if both are NTFS,
3. make sure the HD in question is found in the BIOS setting..
let us know if any suggestions have helped...

DO NOT FORMAT YOUR LIFE AWAY....

[felix8406]

Originally Posted by Snuffy

If you have 3 HD's and the shared HD suddenly quit... couple of Questions"
1. did you sync #3 with Vista? or have Vista index any of the files??
2. Vista can make them unaccessable to XP.. even if both are NTFS,
3. make sure the HD in question is found in the BIOS setting..
let us know if any suggestions have helped...

DO NOT FORMAT YOUR LIFE AWAY....

I'm with Snuffy, do not format your life away. If the above suggestions don't work, boot up using the Vista CD and run the repair Startup option...that should do the trick.

[Znod]

I believe that jedijunk has left the building.