Boomer's PC Dead

[Boomer]

Yup, I no sooner get it back to normal and it takes out the mother board and HD. I lost all on Dec 27. Monday, Dec 29, I was going to do a back-up. The led City of Duluth computer nerd, who works for the city on their PC's, who is also my neighbor, that just moved in next door, said it is a no-go He took my HD home and spend a day scanning it and said all my info is there but there are no folders. He said there was 200 gigs of data on a 40 gig HD. I asked him can he at least find my prize possession, my Opera Bookmarks ? There was like 2,000 of them. I told him the name off the file but so far the file looks blank. I'm in Texas for two months and have no contact with but I doubt it matters. He told me he would call before I go if he found the Opera BM file called opera6.adr. He said he found 6 so far and all where MT But I do have one 1.5 years old so that is better than nothing.

This is or was almost a new Dell, i.e. 14 months old and the second one in 2 years where both where the MB and HD

So, I get to Texas and my buddy tells me his just went also
He lost power in the park when it was running. All it does is go in circles trying to reboot itself. We had to go find a old Keyboard to just see if I could get something in Safe Mode, notah but at least the keyboard got me there. You can't even pull up the Bios, as USB Keyboards just don't work for problems like this, they are dead in the water. I took a look at it and it seems to be his PS got toasted. So we went and got him a new PC

 

[Dentoid]

Not again!:cursin:

 

[Frankie]

That stinks Boomer. I hope you neighbor makes better progress over time if he keeps at it even.
I too lost my pc a few months back. I went with a Gateway this time and it appears to be pretty solid.

 

[Luukosian]

So did your power supply fry everything or what? There are some good HD recovery programs out there that you might be able to use to get your data back but I'm sure that is what your neighbor tried.

As far as your friends computer ussually when you cant even boot into bios, aka nothing shows up on the monitor it means bad memory. Sometimes something called "memory creep" happens where the vibration of the computer causes the memory to slighty come out of its socket, try removing it and putting it back it.

edit: re-read your post and it sounds like you can get past bios so probably not that...you can go into recovery console(you can read on google how to do), then use the command FIXBOOT, if that doesn't work use FIXMBR, probably a bad master boot record. I have a degree in computer hardware so if you have any questions just shoot me a PM. As far as your computer I'm sure its still under warranty isn't it?

Sorry to hear about the bad luck!~

 

[Boomer]

Yup Frank, ~$1,500 in 3 years for Dell's. A buddy on my is going to build me one that if you bought it in a store would be ~ $2,000 just for the CPU It will have all the newest and fastest stuff. It will cost me ~$400 - $500

 

[Luukosian]

The new core I7 proccessors look awsome, motherboards are expensive as hell though. (bored so thought I would butt in the conversation lol...)

 

[Varga]

If you can help it, dont buy another PC till the end of 09. According to my buddy at Microsoft, something totally revolutionary is coming out which will make our computers obsolete and will save you hundreds.

 

[Boomer]

Luuk


My PC

Yup he did, All my data is there but none of it is in any folders. This seems have happen when I tried to re-load Windows Vista. About 1/2 hr went by and the massage was, " a disk read error has occured to continue press Ctrl alt Delete". Well, it just kept doing this over and over PC nerd was there of 2 hrs, and said there is no OS system on C Drive, just a recovery drive left on the C. He pulled the HD out and ran another test where it seems to be the MB. We also tested the Ram and it was fine.

My buddies PC.


A long talk with a friend seems to be sure it is the PS. Often PS get toasted in equipment from power surges or power kills. I have seen it many times with other equipment. And is why all my pricey stuff and PC run on APC UPS's.

Oh we can get stuff up on F-12 but nothing happens when you choose something, like Safe Mode. When you do, Files and drivera start to load then stop, with "Please wait". Well, you wait and it just goes into another reboot and the circle continues.

 

[Boomer]

2009 ? I can't wait that long


Luuk

Looking at Quad-fours from ADM. I don't know of anything faster than that

 

[Dentoid]

Boomer's PC goes boom-boom!

 

[Boomer]

Yup, and again

This time I'm going to get me one of those fancy dally back-up external drives

 

[goldenmacman]

idk, after my last PC.. i said i was done with Windows.. now im all MAC!! i would never go back..
sorry bouts the comps

 

[Varga]

I got a used dell d610 off Ebay from a reconditioning company. The thing has been working like a champ for 6 months.

So the new PC runs around $300-500 and will last you as long as a TV set. 1Gig hard drive and something like 65mb RAM but is the fastest thing ever made. It has to do with the operating system which they've been working on for 9 years. supposed to come out less than a year after W7

 

[lcstorc]

That stinks.
Sorry Boomer.
It's odd that you have so much trouble with Dell. I have 4 Dells and they are all great machines though 2 are getting old and need to be replaced just because.
The one Gateway I have had spent more time in transit for repairs then it did at my house.
Go figure.
Not sure if I would wait for the new whatever from Mocrosoft anyway. It will take a couple of years until the big bugs are worked out anyway.

 

[DaveK]

I'm sorry to hear about the loss of your system.

To everyone -

I can not over emphasize enough how important it is to have full, complete, recoverable backups of your computer system.

Be sure to test your recovery process. You should be able to recover on a "bare metal" system, i.e. just the hardware in working condition, with no software on it.

If you are backing up to an external disk drive, be sure you have at least two drives, three or more would be better, and alternate the backups. You need something to recover from in the even of a failure durring a backup.

Like the computer people say -

"There are people who back up religiously, and there are people that have never had a total system crash"

 

[BigAl07]

Man that SUCKS! Sorry to hear bro!!

I think I'm going to invest in a total "System Imaging" solution shortly just because of this.

 

[Luukosian]

Yeah, in the future if you can afford 3 or more disks just run a RAID configuration with striping that way you can recover if a disk is lost.

Your computer:

So all your files show up but theres no folders? Guess the file system must have been corrupted. I'm sure the PC guy tried it but try the command sfc /scannow,(get your vista disk ready). Or chkdsk /r(i think you can still do this in vista). Just trying to help because I've seen hard drives come back from worse! Im assuming that you can launch the operating system if you are viewing the files?

friends:

Did you say this was a laptop? Hard to test the PS if it is but I would try the master boot record first, a lot of times if the computer was shut down hard it can become corrupted. Replacing anything on a laptop is a PITA. Vista has a built in startup fix if you boot from the vista disk or you can go to command prompt from there. Will work even if safe mode doesnt.

 

[DaveK]

If you can help it, dont buy another PC till the end of 09. According to my buddy at Microsoft, something totally revolutionary is coming out which will make our computers obsolete and will save you hundreds.

I got a used dell d610 off Ebay from a reconditioning company. The thing has been working like a champ for 6 months.

So the new PC runs around $300-500 and will last you as long as a TV set. 1Gig hard drive and something like 65mb RAM but is the fastest thing ever made. It has to do with the operating system which they've been working on for 9 years. supposed to come out less than a year after W7

IMHO, if you think Microsoft can actually do that, I have a bridge in Brooklin that I'd like to sell you. First, Microsoft doesn't make computer hardware, and this is the limitation of how fast the system can run. If you look at the main CPU vendors Intel and AMD, and visit their websites, you can dig around see a road map of where they expect to be over the next several years. Faster, with more cores, yes. To the point where it will "something totally revolutionary", no. Remember, all those fancy new chips are extremely expensive at first.

Second, as for Operating Systems, Do you really think Microsoft or anyone else, is going to come out with an new Operating System that it going to run with less resources and run faster? Heck no, it's going to exploit the hardware. In addition, while I can believe the Microsoft could have been working on an operating system for 9 years, they would sure not be able to keep it secret, and it certainly would be obsolete by now.

I think you misquoted something. "1Gig hard drive and something like 65mb RAM" ??? In an age of 1 terabyte disks selling for under $200, and a typical memory size on a new system at 2 to 4 gigabytes, the spec you quote would be so limited today that it would be considered a joke.

My advice, if you need a PC today, buy one today. A typical system is usually good for 3 to 5 years at best. Not that it will not run, but that the state of the art will pass it by, making it necessary to upgrade just to run current software.

 

[Varga]

and how much is your asking price for that bridge?

everyone I know works for microsoft, I'm a firm believer and it has nothing to do with the stupid stupid employee discounts

OK back to topic before Boomer gets grumpy on us

 

[DaveK]

Yeah, in the future if you can afford 3 or more disks just run a RAID configuration with striping that way you can recover if a disk is lost.
...

This is extremely bad advice as far as backup and recovery goes.

While many RAID configurations can protect you against a hardware failure, they can not protect you against other type of failures, such as bad installs or uninstalls, bad udates, viruses, and other malware, user errors like files you delete from trash, and a host of other possible events, such as fire or flood or theft. You'll quickly find that these occur much more often than a hard drive failure.