Life after compete System Recovery

After a vicious online attack, which resulted in competely frozen hard drive and "no operating system found" error message both in and out of Safe Mode, I was able to recover the PC with the operating system disk and applicaton/driver/registry back-up CD's I burned right after purchase. I certainly learned a few things. First, the Local Disk (D:) at 9.79 GB, where system recovery is proportioned, no longer exists. I see only one file inside now: BOOTSECT.BAK FILE , and I'm not sure what, if anything I am supposed to do with this file and all that remaining space in (D:) Second, and my main question, is while a new OS in being installed from the manufacture's disk, system recovery apparently creates and stores a full copy of your previous Windows on Local (C:) named Windows.old.000. I have this created copy and another one named: Windows.old.001. They are sized respectively at about 9.5GB and 11.0GB. I would like to delete these, as my system is running fine now, except for the incredibly long scans due to having three OS now. But, when I try to delete, even as Administrator, access is denied and various other error messages as well. Any ideas on how I can remove these safely and free up more space?

Hi swimdiveski, welcome to WTT. Sounds like whatever hit you was very nasty. I've not seen a virus or malware that wipded out the recovery partition, that's pure evil!.

Before you do anything, please post a copy of your boot.ini file. It's a Hidden, System file so not normally visible

Open System in Control Panel. Click on Advanced. Under "Startup and Recovery" choose "Settings" then "Edit". Copy the data and paste it into a reply here. Just want to make sure it is not pointing to any of the old XP installs.

Once your sure none of it is needed, try booting a Linux "Live" CD like Puppy Linux or one of the other bootable CD packages like EBCD, UBCD or best of all, UBCD4WIN. You should be able to delete both of those directory trees (folders) from any of them.

See this post by Happyrck on GeeksToGo for Puppy Linux:
http://www.geekstogo.com/…..=findpost&am…21#entry1197721
Ignore the stuff about saving data, you just need the info on downloading and creating the Puppy Linux bootable CD. Get the latest version available, not the one the post recommends.

These two are iso images you download then use your burner software to create the bootable CD from:
EBCD
Ultimate Boot CD

This one you have to build on your system and you need a Windows XP Home, Pro or MCE CD. Takes a bit of work to set it up but it's not difficult and when you boot it, you have Windows XP:
Ultimate Boot CD for Windows
How to build UBCD4WIN