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Hi all. A few days ago i installed mcafee total protection 2007 and that disabled my internet connection totally!! I couldn't fix it so i had to uninstall it. After uninstalling mcafee total protection 2007 still i couldn't join Internet!!

So i got mad and went and made repair installation of windows xp pro. After repair installation i couldn't activate it since Internet connection was still not working!! So i went and installed another copy of xp pro on different folder and named it WINDOWS (old one was WINDOWS2).Thanks god now i could join Internet but all my shortcuts and menu items are not visible.

Unfortunately I can't even start sql server 2000 either!! could any one tell me what should i do in order to get access to all database tables and data that i had in sql server and make a back up. I didn't install any new sql server yet. I be happy if an expert tell me what should i do. The installation folder of old windows(WINDOWS2) is still available along with sql server installation folder.Thank and looking forward for reply.

the data is stored in Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Data (or atleast my copy is there for 2k5) but either way you will find a data folder in there and it should have two files for every database an mdf and an ldf, copy both files and then when you have sql sever up and running you can paste those files in to that folder. then using sql sever management studio (i have express) click on the databases folder on hte left and then right click in the area on the right and choose attach. a window shoud pop up and you should be able to browse to the database files. you should verify that the paths are right before clicking ok. that will take your existing sql server data and allow you to move it from server to server or in this case from install to install, but i would recommend that you do a backup and wipe the drive so that it is clean. it sounds like there will be alot of duplicate files due to the recovery method used....

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koncep thanks for your reply. i looked at data folder and i saw there are mdf and ldf files. So you think there is hope to get my data back?

should i go a head and install sql server in diffrent folder before copying mdf and ldf files to new data folder ? when you say wipe the drive you mean i re install window again? i have already done that!! i use this recovery method so i don't lose my files and data.

the data will be there, you should be able to look at the last modified date and it should match about the time the system failed. I have used this method to copy from a development laptop to a production server.

I would install sql to a different directory as well as copy the files to a second location. When I say wipe I mean format so that it starts out fresh, I do that just out of habit when I need to use it as a production server and something happened to it just to be sure it it stable and the previous files cannot cause confusion or problems. It doesn't sound like this is an option so do not worry about it, I just like having things clean. You can probably do a manual clean up after you get everything else back up and running.

fyi: the mdf is the data and the ldf is the log. I would focus my time on backing up the mdf's over the ldfs if space is an issue.