Loss of drivers/progs/mydocs when loading BIOS opt. defaults

[Smiley69]

I have a freecom usb TV stick which started creating a jerky picture when I used it last time on my desktop. I also had the same problem on my Nitro 770 laptop which ended up being caused due to the usb ports reverting back to rev 1.1 for some reason. Link attached. http://forum.novatech.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=238
Coops (PC guru) gave me a very simple routine to rectify the problem and all is now working correctly on the laptop. I tried the same thing on my desktop PC and things have gone very wrong.
Upon boot i was told to enter the bios and load optimal defaults, save and exit. That simple. I tried this on my desktop and the PC has reverted back three months to when I installed a new HDD, thus losing the contents of my documents, removing programmes, reverting/removing drivers and that is what I have discovered so far. Big question, is there an undo to this? Can I reclaim any of the information lost from "my documents". Drivers and removed progammes can be downloaded and re-installed.
M/B MSI K8N Neo 3
Bios Ver 2.1 (now)
Athlon64 3200+
1 Gig RAM
Nvidia 6600GT 128Mb

[Coops]

Loading the optimal defaults in the BIOS would not wind back your machine contents 3 months. That is just not possible.

Do you have more than one hard drive in your system that has a bootable OS?? Maybe it is now booting from old HDD rather than new HDD which would require boot order adjusted in the BIOS.

[Smiley69]

I totally agree with you and so do half a dozen other people on various other website forums.

I have the old HDD still connected up and this is my F: drive. There is a chance that XP is still on there. My new HDD has been partitioned with Win XP installed on the C: drive.

Will check when I return home. You have given me hope!

[Coops]

When you load optimal defaults you reset the BIOS to its default settings. Not something you should do unless you really need to.

Its possible if your old hard drive is still in there and is still bootable that you are booting your old drive and not your new drive.

You need to go in to the BIOS and check the hard drive order. There will be an option in the BIOS that shows the Two Hard drives and which one the BIOS will attempt to load first. If your Old drive is still bootable and is selected to boot before your new drive then it will load the old drive and ignore the new one. So try checking that. Hopefully it is just that =)

[Smiley69]

Coops,
not really sure I need to reply as I'm sure you know that you hit the nail on the head!

Exactly as you said, returning the bios to defaults/optimised settings changed the boot sequence so that my old IDE drive once again became the boot drive. Back in to the bios, swapped it all back round again and hey presto tah dah! All sorted.

If you fancy a laugh at what I get upto when I'm not pestering you check this out. http://www.gixerjunkies.net/gallery/sho ... ileynobike (http://www.gixerjunkies.net/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/5938/what/allfields/name/smileynobike)

Cheers buddy,
Smiley :)

[Coops]

I try to hit the nail on the head but sometimes i can miss ;)