Moderators Amy Posted June 9, 2008 Moderators Share Posted June 9, 2008 I lost my home computer today. No clue what happened, but it won't go any farther than the "windows is starting up" screen before it just restarts itself in an endless loop. Can't even get into safe mode. Any have a tip, beyond my local computer repair place? I'll be sick if I've lost all my photos and movies:( Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Cornell Posted June 9, 2008 Share Posted June 9, 2008 Amy If your windows wants to start up, the hard drive may still be OK. There may be a problem in the power supply, Sometimes the power supply drops out after time, leaving only a portion of the computer working. Regards Jim Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DizRotus Posted June 9, 2008 Share Posted June 9, 2008 It should be possible for someone to retrieve your photos etc. from your hard drive, even if it's kaput. I hope it' not toast. When the smoke clears, you should investigate regularly backing up irreplaceable files (photos, etc) on DVDs. Each week I use a rewritable DVD to make a backup. The next week I rewrite the older copy with the latest files. That way I always have two copies; one that's no more than a week old and one that's no more than two weeks old. I occasionally make an extra copy on a non-rewritable DVD and store it off premises. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Amy Posted June 9, 2008 Author Moderators Share Posted June 9, 2008 Jim I hadn't thought about the power supply..that may make sense. It has been running too hard a lot lately -- the back up fan has been kicking in way more than normal . Could that be an indicator? Any way to test for that? I guess if I knew what I was doing I could just replace it DizRotus, Luckily, I had started backing up a lot of pics on disc last weekend. I got my favorites, but not nearly all of them. Lesson learned. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Amy Posted June 9, 2008 Author Moderators Share Posted June 9, 2008 Sorry about the lack of breaks ...posting from my itouch with minimal formatting options! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Cornell Posted June 9, 2008 Share Posted June 9, 2008 I wish I was there I work in IT in the casino here in colorado. I bet its the power supply. I would take it to a computer related store so they can test it, Power supplies are a lot cheaper than replacing the entire unit. If you see the windows starting up, the hard drive should be fine. By the way, Great job on the RF-7s. Regards Jim Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seti Posted June 9, 2008 Share Posted June 9, 2008 It could also be windows corruption. Any new software installed or ungraceful shutdowns? Even if windows won't start you can mount the drive if the drive isn't damaged and retrieve your important files. Do you have any nice IT guys at Klipsch that would do it for a burger : ) That is what I usually charge. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pauln Posted June 9, 2008 Share Posted June 9, 2008 Do you have a boot disk? If so, try that; and if you don't have a backup of your files, do that right away. You could copy them to a network location. Sometimes the BIOS gets whacked and needs to be reset to default. Pulling out the battery for a day ortwo will force a reset of the BIOS. Do you have the "repair" and "restore" utilities on disk/CD? Both repair and restore can fix some problems without losing your files. Put the Utility CD in and start up the computer. If the repair and restore utilities fail you may have to reinstall the OS. One option is to reinstall without formating the drive. There are some tools that will allow you to recover your files before a hard option reinstall that wipes all data - you'll need help from the manufacturer\technical support to do that... Good luck. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Amy Posted June 9, 2008 Author Moderators Share Posted June 9, 2008 I do have a restore disc but I wasn't sure what to do with it. I was worried it would wipe out everything. I'll give it a try. Thank you for all the suggestions! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Cornell Posted June 9, 2008 Share Posted June 9, 2008 Amy In that case type R for repair. You may have to hit the F10 key when you re boot it to open the command. Select the CD ROM enter. This should start the disc. Regards Jim Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DizRotus Posted June 9, 2008 Share Posted June 9, 2008 Be careful. Before you use that "restore disc" be certain that it will not clear out your hard drive. If there is any possibility that using it will erase your hard drive, get the data from your hard drive, if posssible, before restoring th OS. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Amy Posted June 9, 2008 Author Moderators Share Posted June 9, 2008 Well, I was able to run the disc, but I have no idea what to do with the prompts that came up. It was from Symantec, and had options on there such as partition and image ... I was clueless so I escaped out of it and got a dos prompt. Didn't know what to do with that either. The fan started running in super high mode again just a couple minutes after that. I can get into the bios, but dont know enough to do much with it. Still no luck getting safe mode. I think this is a job for the professionals! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marvel Posted June 10, 2008 Share Posted June 10, 2008 Amy... find someone you trust who can be there. Remove your drive from your computer and get it added as a second drive in another PC. Copy all of your pics, documents, spreadsheets, etc. Most folks will have the extra drive space these days. If they don't want to open up their PC, buy one of the little cases to install your drive so that it can be used as an external usb drive. Then you can put it back in your PC and start over. Do what you already did to get the files back on your drive. There's a dozen ways to do this, but that is pretty safe and a more sure way you won't lose your personal files. Bruce Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seti Posted June 10, 2008 Share Posted June 10, 2008 Amy... find someone you trust who can be there. Remove your drive from your computer and get it added as a second drive in another PC. Copy all of your pics, documents, spreadsheets, etc. Most folks will have the extra drive space these days. If they don't want to open up their PC, buy one of the little cases to install your drive so that it can be used as an external usb drive. Then you can put it back in your PC and start over. Do what you already did to get the files back on your drive. There's a dozen ways to do this, but that is pretty safe and a more sure way you won't lose your personal files. Bruce I left the part out about using another computer to get the files on another medium. What Marvel said is spot on. Carefull with that restore disc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jacksonbart Posted June 10, 2008 Share Posted June 10, 2008 Sorry to hear about your issues, been there many times. Usually when you do the restore it tells you if you are gong to repartion your hard drive, which is a no, no if you don't have data backed up on the main drive. I would recommend in the future buying an external HD of .5 to 1 terabyte and to perform weekly backups. Good luck you should not loose your data. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oldtimer Posted June 10, 2008 Share Posted June 10, 2008 I hope it's not related to this: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Windows-XP-SP3,5334.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marvel Posted June 10, 2008 Share Posted June 10, 2008 We have been slowly rolling out SP3 on the computers at the college where I work. We have only had a problem with one PC, which was a a dual monitor setup, and one of the monitors was in portrait mode. Reinstalling the video drivers fixed this one. Almost all the PCs are Dells, the newer ones with dual core AMD procs., and have gone well (I may find my own pc dead in the morning...after saying this.) Just did the update on some IBM desktops from a lab, and all is well, but everthing on theme are fresh installs. We always blow away the factory install and push new installs, so we start with a clean slate. Of course, that means ALL the drivers for those machines get reinstalled fresh too. (System drivers, video, chipset, audio), but we roll the installs into Attachmate's Wininstall, and it usually goes pretty smoothly. Bruce Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
colterphoto1 Posted June 10, 2008 Share Posted June 10, 2008 bake some cookies for a single IT guy and have him over? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BLSamuel Posted June 10, 2008 Share Posted June 10, 2008 I've ran into problems where using Windows restore to restore to the night before has gotten things going again. I've had problems similar to yours where it just wouldn't boot up but eventually I could get to safe mode and run windows restore and it would undo whatever had gotten corrupted. I know it's a sign of insanity, but sometimes it took several attempts. I think the last time I went to bed with a couple of things downloading and installing (I forget what) and my laptop was hosed the next day. On my Dell I had to press one of the function keys to get to the boot options where I could boot in safe mode. When you get things going, I'd suggest getting an external USB harddrive and Microsoft SyncToy. SyncToy is a Microsoft Power Tool (or something like that) with which one can easily backup one's data files and can be downloaded for free. I don't try to back up the system as I figure I'll eventually have to reload everyhting anyway. I have SyncToy scheduled to backup my data files daily and also to create a weekly and monthly backup of the daily backup which seems to work pretty well. I could easily access all my data files when I reloaded everything onto a larger hard drive a few weeks back. I do howevver, need to start creating backups to store away from home in the event of a true disaster. Good luck. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay481985 Posted June 10, 2008 Share Posted June 10, 2008 It should be possible for someone to retrieve your photos etc. from your hard drive, even if it's kaput. I hope it' not toast. When the smoke clears, you should investigate regularly backing up irreplaceable files (photos, etc) on DVDs. Each week I use a rewritable DVD to make a backup. The next week I rewrite the older copy with the latest files. That way I always have two copies; one that's no more than a week old and one that's no more than two weeks old. I occasionally make an extra copy on a non-rewritable DVD and store it off premises. remember dvd recordables use a dye pigment method that over time will degrade and make the dvd useless. This is different from cds and dvds that are made in the tried and true stamp method that actually presses the dvd layer on a stamp and will not degrade. Most dvds and cds that are recordable will last usually 5-10 years but in a non sunlight environment. food for thought Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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