[holymoly]

My PC has upon startup has reverted to state before a hard drive format that was done July 2007.

I checked a restore point and only today's Oct 21 was there and the next previous month was not Sept 2008 but July 2007.

I tried booting in safe mode for the most recent configuration that worked but no change.

All folders and files since july 2007 has disappeared.

Anyone know what's going on?

I am on another PC right now.

[70Gman]

Formatting a drive does not necessarily 'blank' it out - the information is still there, just not configured to be read. It's pretty weird that it's reverted to the old data, and that the old data hasn't been overwritten in more than a year... but it's possible.

Luckily, this means it's likely the new data is still on the drive.

Unluckily, unless you know what you're doing, you'll probably have to shell out some $ to get someone to recover it for you.

[Elvandil]

It sounds like the OS was reinstalled again. Someone ran the restoration routine and erased all the previous files.

[holymoly]

That is an issue. Interesting how this happens. How could someone have reinstalled the O/S by just rebooting? I didn't do this.

[holymoly]

Finally after a number of warm reboots or restart, I performed a complete owerdown or shutdown and the current state has been restored.

OK, but now what had really happened I like to understand, is this a symptom of impending hard drive failure and next an updated backup is in order. Any other ideas?

[peacox]

The logical explanation is that in July 2007 when you thought you had formated and overwritten the c: drive, you had actually created an additional partition and installed into it making it the c: drive when you booted from that partition. On the 21 oct 2008 you accidentally booted from the pre July 2007 partition which made all of that data available and no restore points later than July 2007 except today's. Later you booted from the later partition and found the more recent installation and data.
HTH

[holymoly]

I think you're right. Now seeing the older partition, there were some items I could use.

Is there any manner I can intentionally boot that partition?

[Elvandil]

Look in Disk Management and post a picture so we can see what partitions exist.

Right-click Computer > Manage > Disk Management.

[holymoly]

Finally got around to:

attached is copy of Disk Management

[Elvandil]

What do you see on the E: and F: drives? Did you create them yourself?

[holymoly]

No. The E: drive at 35GB was the older original system drive. I asked the Computer shop to make the newer HD now C: become the system drive after doing a reformat.

I don't see anything out of ordinary.

[holymoly]

the old drive or parttion booted again. How can I get the newer partiton to boot and let the older partition be?

[holymoly]

bump*

[holymoly]

Bump twice

[holymoly]

This PC is definitely on its last days.
I took it to the shop and we told some capacitors on the motherboard are burned out, get a new PC.

I will do that, but I need to make additional backups first.

I keep booting to the old partition, when I wish it to boot to the newer like it always did.

While booting the Primary slave the older drive, does an autodetecting and it thinks about before a message that it failed and the older partiton boots up.

Anyway around this, to get the newer partion to boot?