You know the above call from your student children do you??
Tonights one is the laptop has crashed. She was reading some of her notes when suddenly the screen went black with a heap of numebers and that was it all over. So a restart invokes al the usual disk checks etc which she says took forever and told her that clusters were damaged or lost or removed or something like that (a bit non specific on her behalf). Any ways everything on the desktop (icons) is cocked up and all the programs seem to be corrupted. I spoke her through a system restore and that's sorted out the icons but all software programs i.e word excell avg etc etc are non accesable (sp). All of her files SEEM to be there she says but she can't work with them.
SO how severe is this likely to be?? all the recovery discs are at home (here) so it'll be the weekend till I see it.

Personally I'd buy a cheapo USB hard disk and copy the important stuff over before it goes even more Pete Tong.....

Sound like the OS has got corrupted memory/HD glitch. when you say system restore you mean CD install or a system restore from the menu?

If you have recovered using the CD then the registry will be reset to default and you will need re-install the applications

System restore from the menu (all the discs are at home here)

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Sound like the OS has got corrupted memory/HD glitch

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Be kind, go buy her a Mac laptop they really don't do this sort of thing

Caber

As per Benb, get a copy of all the work files etc. then if you have to re-build it nothing is lost, keep it off the internet if it is a malicious attack no one can connect to it that way. Do re-connect till its AV'd up etc. again...

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keep it off the internet if it is a malicious attack no one can connect to it that way

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Originally posted by caber
Be kind, go buy her a Mac laptop they really don't do this sort of thing

Caber

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Originally posted by caber
Be kind, go buy her a Mac laptop they really don't do this sort of thing

Caber

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I would deffonatly agree with geting all you can of importance of it ASAP.
- Onto cd, memory stick, email it out, whatever.

Then proberbly wipe the lot. Do a full low leval format, and try and rebuild from there, depending on the stat of the harddisk at that point.

If shes not upto it, it may be the best option to take it to a local pc firm/bloke (not a chain, pc world, etc) or just a techy uni freind.

Dont buy a mac, unless you want a mac.



Daniel

if youre doing anything important on a pc/mac you should be saving your files to an external drive some thing like an icey box then when the operating system goes tits up and it will you dont lose the important stuff. If the operating system was xp (not sure if 2k 98 etc have it) then it may be possible to run a system restore to put it back as was before the crash! youll find it under start - accesories - systems tools, but it all depends if this option was running as to if it will be there for her.

It sounds like the hard disk is going to the big disk world in the sky, they have a finite life.


Salvage what documents can be salvaged on to CD RW/DV RW, external drive and try doing a full re-install with a suface test of the hard disk.

This may work but in the longer term the hard disk will probalbly buy the farm.

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Originally posted by caber
Be kind, go buy her a Mac laptop they really don't do this sort of thing

Caber

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Originally posted by Taz Surfleet
if youre doing anything important on a pc/mac you should be saving your files to an external drive some thing like an icey box then when the operating system goes tits up and it will you dont lose the important stuff. If the operating system was xp (not sure if 2k 98 etc have it) then it may be possible to run a system restore to put it back as was before the crash! youll find it under start - accesories - systems tools, but it all depends if this option was running as to if it will be there for her.

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Well its home and the thing SEEMS to boot and run Ok BUT all the program file folders are empty. Zilch Nadda SFA and there is nowt in the recycle bin either. A search for exe files finds none of the program exe file at all anywhere.
At the moment avg is back on and running and no viruses found???????
Going to run adaware as well.
In fact the only programs available from the "which application do you want to open this file" are
Paint
Notepad
Power DVD
and Windows fax and picture viewer.

does this mean anything to any of you computer guru's??
Looks like a day of application re installs but methinks I should go the whole hog and do a recovery from the original cd's.
Any advice (not to tecky geeky stuff mind I'm not that into computer buffery).
Thanks
Gary

did you try the system restore? from what youre saying it sounds like someones been messing!
What version of AVG are u running? the freebie is fine to a point but youd be amazed at what the full version finds that the freebie misses, also AVG doesnt pick up all spyware or trojans if your going to rebuild it I would scrub the hard disk thoroughly first to make sure theres nothing there something like webroots disk erase (free with window washer) will do the trick but remember to get anything you can save off first !

Well it's 9pm and since 11am and some of last night I've been trying to get this thing sorted out.
It's looking good now BUT internet explorer does not want to download files. You get the pmcia card data transfer light working but after a while it tells you ie cannot download the file. SO firefox it is then.

NOW here's the shite part. After effing about getting files etc discs etc and what not (cause surprise surprise the original discs are "Somewhere". And then only managing to set up xp if the drive was formatted to ntfs and the re installing all the software (which I had safely stashed) it got to the stage I felt it was as good as it was gonna get for her to take it back to uni next week.
SO I DECIDED to have a tidy around where everything was scattered in disarray and dismay and lo and behold the MISSING DISC was in an envelope that I had NOT looked in.AAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH.

So now I'm really pissed off. Should I reformat the drive to fat32 (I think it was that to start with) and re install using the system recovery and cystem discs that I NOW have??
Can you change back to Fat32??
Should I leave well alone
Am I a twat.

No, you can't convert from NTFS to FAT32, only the other way around.

NTFS is a better filing system in most ways, I'd personally leave it as it is if it's working.