Computers, the Bane of mankind, the evils of Microsoft

For some reason, the Registry of my computer got corrupted, and I could only boot in "Safe Mode". No matter what I did, even restoring a backup of the boot file, no luck. I decided ro reload the system. I keep all my data on two separate other hard drives, 2 Terabytes each.

I got Windows 7 loaded again, everything went smoothly, but I noticed the computer would not recognize the hard drives. I went to the disc manager, and both were there. The common thing to do is to rename them, usually I use the same letter, which I did again, this is not the first time I have done this. Be aware, Microsoft, in one of it's updates, decided if you rename a hard drive, without telling you, it does a quick format, it happens in the blink of an eye, no way to stop it, no other choices given. I didn't find a supposed work around till after.

If I had unplugged the hard drives, this may not have happened, but there's no way to know as I would have to have plugged them back in eventually.

I have lost every model I have $1000's of dollars of programs, some which I can reinstall, but other I can't, because they were part of a network, and it is no longer allowing activation, even if you had it running. (Yes, Adobe sucks).

So, I have to start over. I have spent 48 hours going through the main hard drive taking every file I can take and will have to manually see what they are. I lost everything. Thank You Micro$soft.

(and you Apple users, I've seen the same thing happen for different reasons).

I built this computer years ago. It's not much, an AMD X965 Black Edition 4 core, with 8 Gigs of Ram and an AMD R290 with 2 Gig's of Video DDR5 ram on it. An M5A97 R2.0 MoBo
Great for CAD. I have done this procedure so many time, I have never had this problem. Googling I have found that this problem crept up on 2017. I cannot believe how many people this has happened too. The bummer is I know I can't get CS3 back, because it was given to me by a friend that works for a huge company. All the slots are used up, and they closed any new and re-activation. I wasn't good with it, but I could do some important things with it, that actually I could do with Rhino, come to think of it, a lot of what I did with CS3, I could do with Rhino. That shows you how little I understood the program.

I just posted this so anyone like me, stuck in their ways, might reconsider them. :Smartass: I should have removed the hard drives, but I routinely reinstalled the O.S., and that hard drive was dedicated to that, the others to storage. I can honestly say I have done this at least 8 times since I have built this computer, and this never happened. All I am interested in is my .3dm files, and I just recovered a sh*tload of them, everything that was on that hard drive. Now, I have to see what they are as the names are not right.

My problem, just thought I'd share it. I had Oral Surgery, and my jaw feels like Mike Tyson punched me in the jaw. The pain just doesn't go away.

Looking into it, Thanks!

Yes, I remember. I am going to buy a 4 Terabyte Hard drive, because to look through everything, I need to spread it out, then rename it. Since one of my 2 Terabytes is what I am trying to recover, and my main drive, also 2 Terabyte, seems to be getting full fast, it comes down to mo money mo money and, mo money. :Computer:

None of the programs run the software I use, or I would have jumped ship a long time ago. I actually used to do code, the first code I did was APL, in 11973. Back then your monitor was this loud as hell IBM ball printer. I went on to BASIC, some Fortran, ASCE, then it was all proprietary code, for the aerospace companies I worked for.

My God, remember how heavy those things were, and the heat they generated. The way images burned in, I bet people left secret stuff burned into the screen. I took one of those apart at electronics school, and got it working, but it was to weak to run the most basic DOS programs of the day. All those programs to me, really showed how based of APL, the Texas Instruments TI-66 was a truly ground breaking calculator, in that you really could write programs.but you could see how much was being put together and possibilities arising. Great boat anchor. Even back in school you cooldn't give those things away. I will never forget that horrid green tint the CRT screen had.