my old machine [ which i built myself ] lasted about 2.5 years.
the hard drive in that machine : 4 years.
it has been the proud home for several test builds and RCS and Betas of different VLs.
But my bad phase started last month.
1. in all my excitement about the new soho release, i created a user account that already existed, so the desktop folder got over written, and with it i lost access to 7 years worth of digital pictures that i had collected. unfortunately for me, the last back up was about 7 months ago:( . [ i know i know, but i was really busy ] )
2. before i could realize my mistake and try to retrieve the lost files [ they are still on the drive some where.. just lost a way to access directly. Any help here would be really really welcome

] the machine just stopped working.
3. So i ordered a new mobo from newegg, but no dice, so i returned it, and due to "domestic pressure" had to buy a new machine. it happened to be a hp- with dual athlon64 4400+ . The case is awesome. in general the build quality of the machine is good.
I asked the guy if i could add both my old drives, one ide 200GB and a newer SATA 300GB in that machine, he said positively yes. but when i open it, there is only one slot:( so i can only use on now.
4. My head hangs in shame as i write this, but the new machine comes with Crap-sta pre-installed.
And i have to deal with its obnoxious UI. So to relieve myself of the pain, i quickly installed my trusted old drive with all kinds of VL installs on it. it booted into VL fine but X wouldn't launch. [ same story with ubuntu7] despite trying to reconfigure X through vasm several tiems, and trying all the nvidia drivers, nothing worked. i remember in older VL installs the option to use VESA (or is it MESA? ) the default driver for all cards was available, but not with soho5.8.
5. So short of reinstalling VL again, i am kinda out of options here:(
6. I am not going to recount all the pain i had to go through trying to make Trash-sta work normally.
So yeah if any of you guys can help me get my old pictures which were in a folder on the desktop which got over written, it would be great!!
thanks
cheers
ram