PC has been partitioned into two drives.

The one where the OS resides C: is NTFS, but it also has a D: drive that is FAT, where the system restore points are kept.

Is this normal?
Does this cause problems, with this configuration?
Are the restore points compatible when used to restore?
Can you suggest a way to repair?

K

What makes you say they are kept on another drive.

The restore points are kept in in a hidden, restricted access folder called System Volume
Information.

NTFS formatted drives can read FAT happily, so no worries there.
Normally restore points are kept on the appropriate drives, as Seahwk mentioned, so I'm unsure about your reference to the NTFS ones being on the FAT drive.

When I went to use win defrag this is what I saw, sorry 'bout the glare
I explored D:, and that's where I saw the folder for System Restore:

http://lh4.ggpht.com/_80cGISOzOds/Sub0PXX49BI/AAAAAAAABKQ/Fd9fFTm3QZk/s800/100_1679.JPG

This is my niece's (DW side) PC.

The PC was running slow, and getting slower, it had 256mb Ram, and I had two sticks of 256 (compatible) left from my upgrade, so it has 512 now.
It was when we arrived, I was told PC was very "clunky", DH "upset"


Started back up, and you could notice a slight improvement
Went to defrag, and saw above, after defrag finished, more slight improvement
Installed Glary Utilities, ran 1-click maintenance, found 1433 problems in registry alone, fixed all issues, more slight improvement
Installed Malwarebytes, it found 144 problems in registry, all found in root sector. System locked while finishing scan
Locked so hard, Task Manager would not open on three-finger-salute
PC would not shut off at switch, only way to shut down was to pull plug, niece has done this before
Tried several plug restarts, to finish Malwarebytes scan
Each scan would lock right after finishing root sector scan, and trying to continue
Last attempt at plug restart left me at active desktop, when asked if I wanted to restore Active desktop, and clicking on button, PC would lock
E machine has Comcast Cable, with McAffee protection
When purchased PC was set-up with drives available down to K: , but unusable unless you insert disk :confused: What's that all 'bout?
PC has been used for downloading music, and transferring same to cell phones



End of Line

Honestly.
Back up and rebuild.

If you can find more RAM all the better..
You could spend countless hours attempting a fix, when a reinstall of XP would save time and much pulling of hair..

I was leaning that way myself... Now, to tell the DW, and DN.

I hope the DN has all the Disks.

Would agree on a re-installation from scratch and go from there and when re-installed, would suggest to format the d: drive as NTFS

Groundwork already started, DW took it pretty well, but DN a little sad.

Thank You both for your advice.

K

Do NOT touch the D drive. This is your Recovery Partition. Most manufacturers create a small Recovery partition with an image of the drive as it came from the factory. You can use that partition to restore the PC to factory settings.

So if I start in safe mode, I can use the D: drive to restore?

Normally on boot there a "secret" button to press that starts the recovery process from the hidden partition.
Normally it's F11 but varies according to manufacturer.

So if I start in safe mode, I can use the D: drive to restore?

No, when you boot there should be a choice to press a key to enter recovery or something like that. By the time you get to Safe Mode its too late. The ability to boot to the recovery partition is in the POST.

No! I just want to know which computer it is..
If it's DELL..
Press ctrl+f11.. and then restore option :

If it's HP/E-machine.. tried hitting f12 and then restore..
You don't have to put in the disk

Okay everyone here is the latest plan of action, after discussion with DW, an DN.

After abundant amounts of time in researching this problem here at AMHD, and at other sites.
I have found more information on, and a way to reset eMachines. See: How to Reset an eMachine Computer | eHow.com (http://www.ehow.com/how_4829262_reset-emachine-computer.html)

After SG's #9 post, Cb's #11, and SG's #12, I thought back to the sequences of rebooting the PC.
The PC never did fail to reboot, and as it was doing so, each time I saw the moment that the option to press F11 would occur, (i.e. "Press F11 to start recovery 1 ”)

In deference to d_h's #13 post I will also try F12, if the above attempts fail to produce results, although with following the PC's on-screen instructions I strongly feel that, that, procedure will produce the desired effect of entering the reset process.
Once that is achieved I will follow the steps outlined in the above link, onward to a successful outcome.

There are several other caveats to be aware of with eMachines:

A bad power supply, notorious for this, especially Bestec
If it has a AGP video card rather than the integrated on-board variety
A bad motherboard

If everything runs normally after reset/recovery, okay, good.

But right before every time it locked, the display would split into an RGB “ghost effect” similar to looking at 3-D without the glasses that would lead me to believe that the video card was receiving an unregulated supply of power or it could have the AGP type card. that will then need to be tested.

Borrowed from post #2 here: Power supply or motherboard symptoms - Geek.com (http://www.geek.com/forums/topic/power-supply-or-motherboard-symptoms)
"then Look at the large chips and heat sinks (apart from the CPU) to see if either has pulled out. There are four U-Bolt-shaped connectors on some models... at the video chip set heatsink. Sometimes one of these will pull out ruining the board."

For now it's just a matter of scheduling the time to get back to our DN's home to do the deed.

I would like to thank:

seahwk83
Curlyben
ScottGem
desire_harya
For your invaluable insight, time, and effort to help me, and for giving my brain a jogging exercise.
Not sure when this will happen, but I will post further updates.

K