Did you see the red furry ball!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Lackey]

Thats right I did it. Blew it to smitherenes. All gone the whole thing. Put all I own on external hard drive did one download NOT FROM HERE corrupted the whole thing. The game is gone the downloads all 5433 files everything. Spent hours trying to repair to no avail so what next you ask well lets reformat lose everything but save the drive. NOOOO didnt save the drive it's gone history never to be again. So next best new hard drive and I got that but one question How do I get the programs that appear under add/remove programs that no longer have a readable f drive to uninstall?
And if anyone is wondering the blowing up of all my downloads and my game I spent absolute hours revamping every single ugly person in all 3 neighborhoods  absolutely was visible from space and I am sure the neighbors thought someone was being killed here.

[Marg]

 Oh Man that sucks big time.   I can't answer your question but wanted to sympathize with you.   

[aussieone]

Hmmm...what to say?

First off I guess would be to offer my condolences for your loss  

Second of all, what happens when you click on the programs and try to uninstall anyway? I'm not technically minded to say the least but hey, it wouldn't hurt to try (or would it?..waits for rocks and such to be hurled in my direction)

Thirdly....I did see a big, red, fiery ball but I just presumed that was the sun setting  

[gali]

There are companies that restore the hard disk (C), when it "explode". But it costs a lot of money.

[Lackey]

when I try to uninstall say the sims 2 because it is still there it tells me I need to uninstall uni first so ok I knew that but when I try to do that it tells me there was an error because it cant find drive f. So I sit and say yea no sh-- sherlock thats because it is sitting clear across the room where i threw it after i figured out it was trashed and I do make a habit of talking to my computer so I not so nicely inform it that it will join the rubble in the corner if it doesnt quit screwing with me. LOL needless to say this demon little machine doesnt really care what I have to say and loves to push my buttons. So I figure a cigarette, a beer, and a prozac and back to downloading.

[Jysudo]

Poor you! I hope the prozac calms you down. Relax , take a break. I am sure things will be ok. Worse come to worse, spending some $ always helps.

[Sleepycat]

that really sucks   

I too, offer my condolences for your loss. If it happened to me I would be crying!

[Lackey]

ok exactly what it says
"An error occurred while trying to remove the sims 2 university. You do not have access to F:Program You can specify the new uninstall program
  

[Scotbo]

The only way to remove these program entries is to manually go through the registry using regedit and delete any references to your F: drive. I do not recommend this unless you know exactly what you're doing as it can result in a fiery ball of death for everything on your C: drive (if you do attempt this back everything up first).  This is a possibility even if you know what you're doing, so my recommendation is to just skip it and back up the important stuff on your c: drive and take the plunge and reformat and reinstall Windows.  Sorry your drive went kaput.  I've been there.

[windy_moon]

 

This is just too close to my own tragic loss last week of um, everything.  You are bringing back the pain.

Your Sims and downloads have joined my Sims and downloads in the Great Beyond.     Don't think of them as gone, just think of them as continuing their little Simmy lives elsewhere, with an eternally full banquet table that never needs "clean up"...a place where all Sims are friends, and no one is furious.

I'm sorry for your loss!

[J. M. Pescado]

As much as the tale of downloading the non-awesome is a good one, I seriously doubt it's possible for a download to corrupt your entire hard drive, unless it was a virus. Is the hard drive physically reformattable, or is this more of a hardware failure?

[Emma]

I want to know what you downloaded.....

[baaaflatfit]

Yup, I saw a big fiery ball in the sky last night and was trying to figure out what caused it -- now I know. It's a horrible thing, losing a drive. Been there, too

Put all I own on external hard drive did one download NOT FROM HERE corrupted the whole thing.

I don't get that part, though.  Are you saying something you downloaded killed your entire drive?

Max

[Scotbo]

As much as the tale of downloading the non-awesome is a good one, I seriously doubt it's possible for a download to corrupt your entire hard drive, unless it was a virus. Is the hard drive physically reformattable, or is this more of a hardware failure?

Yeah, what 'he who is more awesome than me' said.  I didn't catch that when I read your post. Even a virus can't physically damage a hard drive, but they can make a hard drive appear to be unbootable by messing with the master boot record. It's possible that the drive might be undetectable on boot but still ok. You can try the drive in another computer to see if it will boot, but if it is infected then you may spread the infection. It could be that your disk was about to fail anyway and it just happened to coincide with the download.

[BlueSoup]

What is reformatting your hard drive?  And does that get rid of all the stuff on it, so you have to reinstall Windows and then any programs you want on it?  How does that all work?

Thanks for not pointing and laughing at me. 

[Lackey]

I was sitting here doing my normal looking for elder female clothes and when I am downloading clothes I always down 1 out fit open body shop make sure it is there (way to many times ended up with maxis) So I had been in and out of body shop quite a bit. Then I downloaded an out fit went to open body shop and ya know that  hammer noise ya get when ya click on something that wont open? Got that and it said the drive for this shortcut has been removed or something like that. So I thought it got shut off but nope it was on so I picked it up to look at it and it was making this grinding noise like it was trying to read but couldnt then another little thing popped up in the right hand bottom that said their were files waiting to be burned to a cd. Well I do not have a cd burning so have no idea what that was all about. So we clicked on safely remove hardware shut it down rebooted the computer and a wahlah nothing. blue screen came said it was one of my drives had to be checked and it tried then came back and said it was completely unreadable. Tried this a few zillion times then last ditch effort made a new document folder for drive c rebooted everything and then my computer finally reconized drive f (where my docs folder was). The files were there but I coudl not access any of them not even to copy and paste so I went to seagate and decided to try and reformat and nope it wasnt gonna happen. So I took the fact it  happened right after a download and it was my documents stopping my computer from reading drive F and came to the conclusion of download error but could have been a hardware failure as well. I tried to reinstall sims2pack clean installer last night it says it is still on my computer so I went to fnd files and folders and sure enough there is alot there. I should also state that 2 days ago I reorganized my downloads folder so maybe that was it. but to state what file  I cant do until I am sure that was the problem. Dont want to bash a site without knowing that was the cause. I will be watching it to see what others say in comments though. It was a whole sim.

[jsalemi]

What is reformatting your hard drive?  And does that get rid of all the stuff on it, so you have to reinstall Windows and then any programs you want on it?  How does that all work?

Yup, that's what it does. You boot off a windows CD and choose the complete re-install option.  Somewhere along the line, you'll get an option to reformat the disk.

If the primary boot drive is OK, and you want to reformat a second hard disk, you can do that through Windows itself, using the disk utilities.

[Scotbo]

That is exactly what reformatting means, Bluesoup.  It wipes the drive clean. It doesn't ACTUALLY delete everything on the drive but it renames everything so that it is no longer readable and makes it so that it can be overwritten. After you reformat you have to reinstall everything from scratch- first Windows, then drivers and all programs. A newly formatted drive will not boot without first installing an operating system. 

After some time the Windows registry will invariably become corrupted by installing/uninstalling programs and drivers, etc (or from spyware or viruses).  A reformat gives you a nice fresh start.

[Scotbo]

Mrmtman, if you can still see drive f: thenthe drive isn't dead.  I don't know why you're unable to format it.  Do you get any errors when you try? What happens exactly? What errors do you get when you try to access the files on that drive?

I'm a bit confused. Is the f: drive a removable USB drive?

[BlueSoup]

So, when it makes these files unreadable, does that take up room on your hard drive?

[Marvelleaux]

Back in Sims 1 days I did something like this.  My husband put a second hard drive in the computer and it was formatted differently then the original (one was FAT32 the other was NTFS).  All of my sims games were located on the original, but one night after one Scotch too many I decided to install Superstar (which was notoriously difficult anyway) and ended up somehow installing it on the new drive. 

Ka-boom.

Everything was fixed eventually, but not until I learned a hell of a lot more about computers than I wanted to know.

Good luck~

[Lackey]

The only way to remove these program entries is to manually go through the registry using regedit and delete any references to your F: drive.

Ok what is this? I will try it I have nothing to loose but windows at this point because everything is already gone. I put all my eggs in one basket and an elephant sat on it.

I checked that download and there are 193 satisfied customers so it coudlnt have been that. I also have a virus control that runs all the time so unless one could sneak through it couldnt have been that so I guess hardware failure it must be. I bought my new hard drive last night but it still sits in the box because I am afraid what will happen with all the files still reading on drive c not to mention there is really no point in reinstalling anything untill the new ep is in hand which according to my sources should be tomorrow.

When I try to access the files say to copy and paste it tells me the drive they are on is not there even though I went to my computer drive f and pulled from the list. They even have the little simpe symbol on them but they wont let me touch them.  When I try to reformat it does nothing just sits there like a dead log and grinds. Doesnt  tell me it is formatting, doesnt give me an error just sits and grinds. I waited it out last night thinking well maybe it is doing its thing but nothing happened. And if I try to uninstall a program while hooked to drive f it still tells me it is not there. F  drive is a removable usb.

[Scotbo]

So, when it makes these files unreadable, does that take up room on your hard drive?

Sort of.  The files are all still there, but they're in an unreadable format. When you go to install something or copy new files to the drive the old files get over written, so they no longer continue to take up space once you replace them with new information. Windows will show the drive as being empty (no space taken up). Does that make sense?

[baaaflatfit]

I was sitting here doing my normal looking for elder female clothes and when I am downloading clothes I always down 1 out fit open body shop make sure it is there (way to many times ended up with maxis) So I had been in and out of body shop quite a bit. Then I downloaded an out fit went to open body shop and ya know that  hammer noise ya get when ya click on something that wont open? Got that and it said the drive for this shortcut has been removed or something like that. So I thought it got shut off but nope it was on so I picked it up to look at it and it was making this grinding noise like it was trying to read but couldnt then another little thing popped up in the right hand bottom that said their were files waiting to be burned to a cd.

Just from that much alone, I would say your drive is fried, and I don't think it's because of that download. :\  You've got BodyShop, the Internet, an unzip program -- all these programs going at the same time, and there's a very good chance, unless you have one megafully wonderful computer, it just groaned and died under the pressure.  If you had any errors on your drive before you started doing the above, then that could account for some of the strange behaviour you noted.  I hope this isn't a hopeless case, though!

Max 

[Scotbo]

The only way to remove these program entries is to manually go through the registry using regedit and delete any references to your F: drive.

Ok what is this? I will try it I have nothing to loose but windows at this point because everything is already gone. I put all my eggs in one basket and an elephant sat on it.

I checked that download and there are 193 satisfied customers so it coudlnt have been that. I also have a virus control that runs all the time so unless one could sneak through it couldnt have been that so I guess hardware failure it must be. I bought my new hard drive last night but it still sits in the box because I am afraid what will happen with all the files still reading on drive c not to mention there is really no point in reinstalling anything untill the new ep is in hand which according to my sources should be tomorrow.

I don't think you should try this.  If you're unsure what regedit is then you probably shouldn't start messing with it.  It might just make matters worse.  Also, if Windows is now seeing the drive then the shortcuts to f: drive should again be functioning properly so it should be unecessary. If the drive still refuses to cooperate and you're going to replace it you're much better off just reformatting to start with, as you'll probably end up doing it anyway. It will save you a lot of time and stress.

If you were to install the new drive without reformatting you will be deluged by errors.  Windows will keep looking for files on a drive that no longer exists so you're going to run into a lot of problems.

When I try to access the files say to copy and paste it tells me the drive they are on is not there even though I went to my computer drive f and pulled from the list. They even have the little simpe symbol on them but they wont let me touch them.  When I try to reformat it does nothing just sits there like a dead log and grinds. Doesnt  tell me it is formatting, doesnt give me an error just sits and grinds. I waited it out last night thinking well maybe it is doing its thing but nothing happened. And if I try to uninstall a program while hooked to drive f it still tells me it is not there.

Ok, this is where things get confusing.  If Windows can see the actual files (You are using Windows right? If not, this might all be moot.) then it doesn't make sense that it won't allow you to access them.  Windows must know the drive is there if it's showing you the files, but then it's saying that the drive isn't there when you try to do anything with them? That's just odd.  I also can't understand why it won't let you format.  You would think you'd get some kind of error, like tell you the drive doesn't exist- something anyway.

You didn't answer, or I missed it if you did. You said earlier something about an external drive.  Is your f: drive a USB drive or is it physically seated inside the computer? If it is a USB drive, did you try plugging it into a different USB port to see what happens? Can you access the bios with the drive plugged in and see if it is detected there?

Have you tried running scandisk on your f: drive? If not, try it, and see if you get any errors.