Quote Originally Posted by rvbcaboose
.... i have no want or need to use any kind of linux,..
Good luck with that then. Windows XP is well known to do exactly what it has done to you and recovery tricks that might be done with windows are too complex for me to get into here and usually involve third party data recovery software that is not free. Sadly, all to often the only response one can get from Microsoft or their OEM vendor is to reinstall windows from scratch completely overwriting all the data that is still there. And many computer makers do not even supply the real Windows disk that is needed for some windows based recovery attempts, but rather a special disc that installs all-or-nothing the OEM version of windows for that system with any additional software packages, special drivers, company logos and the like that they configured for that system, and this disc cann't be used to recover files the way a real XP disc might. Even for dedicated XP users it has been found that when Knoppix can boot and see the file system is it a much better way to recover files, assuming that the user didn't configure Windows in some way that would prevent this, such as using a software RAID system that only has a Windows driver or turning on security that will encrypt the files, so we do try to help XP victims with a tool we know will work, even if they are going to go right back to XP when the data is recovered and even though Microsoft appears to be taking steps to make sure that Linux can't write to a NTFS partition even though XP often can't even read from one. If you don't want the benefit of that advice it will not be forced on you.