I moved my computer to southern california like a week ago, so it spend a few hundred miles bouncing around in the trunk of my car. 2 of my 3 hard drives got their power cables disconnected from the trip. after some effort i got everything hooked back up, but couldnt get it to start with hard drive #2 powered on. as soon as i unplugged the power to HD2 it starts fine.

 

the first time i started it up, i know for a fact i used firefox. i got directions online, checked email, etc, and i havent used internet explorer in at least 6 months.

 

only problem is, firefox was installed on HD2. i thought that was a bit odd... the next time i restarted the computer i went to run firefox and it told me the link was bad because the file wasnt there. that makes sense, i went about my business.

 

today i restarted my computer again, and when it came back up winamp, which i have been using for the last week, tells me that the link is bad because the file isnt there. winamp was also installed on HD2.

 

i have absolutely no idea whats going on. does windows keep some memory of files that have been used recently? im pretty sure its impossible for it to be reading the drive that doesnt currently have power, but i also thought it was impossible for it to use programs that were on that drive.

 

i was using winamp as recently as last night, i know im not mistaken on that one. does anyone know how this happens?

Try using a diagnostic boot cd like Hirens (link at bottom of message). It could be that all of that rattling has damaged one or more of your hard drives. Use the boot CD to run tests on the hard drives. Run read/write and surface checks. You could also try the recovery console and run chkdsk.

 

Hirens page: http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd

 

Download page: http://www.9down.com/Hiren-s-BootCD-9-2-14520/