h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

.... Sigh!

Once again I am having PC problems; don't know what is wrong this time but the darned thing just wont boot up even in safe mode. Bloody Microcr*p!

Took it down to the repair shop (another £20 I can ill afford on my meagre student budget) and they reckon it might be a software problem that will neccesitate re-formatting my hard drive ... all those times I lectured people about backing stuff up and I didn't do it myself like a fool.

Luckily all my important Uni work is backed up on disk... as for the rest... pah! probably gone forever.

won't boot might need re-format? hmmmm. Won;t boot how much? Like no BIOS check? Or tries to load the OS and hangs?

(sorry, just lurking along happily through HooToo and spotted this Hope I didn;t startle you! )

Not at all my good fellow.

It gets to the screen where it says "Windows XP" and has a little green bar moving from left to right on the bottom it then freezes. Simlarly when trying from safe mode it hands whilts loading the drivers.

I probably could have had a bash at sorting it myself but I though I need my PC and cannot afford a new one if it breaks so I had better be careful and let the pros do something about it you know.

BTW how did you come across my humble space?

erm, convoluted process though I have seen you about here and there. mostly there

might have come from Luthiena's space or from aka/sat's, I was doing one of my random walks through HooToo so it could be anywhewre really!


Xp - doesn;t that have a recovery disk thingy for it? Do you have the install disk is it one of those pre-installs with no disk supplied? I'm asking cos (although I don;t use XP myself) I know that other versions of windows will do a 'repair' isntall if you bung the CD in the drive and boot from the CD, it should recognise the existing install and attempt to install over the top of it repairing damaged files, thus saving all your files.

Yeah I know about that... tried it last time this happened and mucked it up big style cause I didn't know what I was doing. I am a bit of a spaz when it comes to computers; I got lost when they did away with DOS.

The repair shop wanted the XP disk so I think they might try something like that. They are pretty good down there and I know one of the guys who works there so I doubt they will rip me off. Last time when it was easy to fix (the Graphix card had come loose) they gave me my money back!

* in*
Did I hear my name mentioned????
*ears prick up*

Awww, you and your computer, i hope it gets fixed soon

Cheers!

Yeh Ferret, good luck with that. I know the pain of being offline and without net or writing programs...just don't make it 4 months until it works, like I did.

I still heard my name mentioned....good or bad????

Hi Saturnine *waves*

Luthenia: I think I.C.O.T.A.N. mentioned that he found my space through your U page!

Sat: Shop say it should be fixed by the weekend. Luckily I have access to the internet both at work and at uni!

Funny, reading through this, I expected the OS to be Win98 or ME.
Rubbish though Windows still is, XP is a vast improvement - I've not had any such errors with it.

But, if you still have the original XP disc, you can simply do a 'recover' or a 'rescue' from it - You load up the install program (Seeing as you can get past the boot image loading - Boot from CD) and wait for it to say you may recover a damaged XP partition. Select your XP partition and hit Enter. It'll then reinstall all the Windows bits and pieces, and leave all your other files, say 'document.doc' alone.

In effect, rescuing all the technical stuff, and protecting your files. Just in case it happens again/to anyone else.

who's this ICOTAN chappy? He seems to follow me around pretending have made my postings

Thing to do is keep a floppy disk a basic OS on it, something like a partition magic boot disk or windows dos boot disk hanging around. You can either fdisk the hdd yourself and reinstall XP (thus saving yourself the 20quid + at the shop) or you can install an old OS (like 98 or something) and then install XP. As they use different formats the old one will not recognise the XP install and assume a new install thus overwritting the mbr and stuff.

Or with partition magic you can zap the MBR. But this sounds like it may be a bit advanced for you Thing is, once you get to the stage of you can't start it up you might as well try anything providing you have a bootable floppy (or CD if your BIOS allows that) since you can always clean format it. I had a real problem on mine when I was booting Linux / BeOS and Win2k that resulted in a complete f-up.

Anyway, for peace of mind it is sometimes worth just handing it over to the shop.

Hence why I continue to pay extortionate garage bills for my car whenever something needs doing, just can't be bothered with the time and effort to fix it myself

*looks behind Ictoan for ICOTAN*

I don't think he's here now!

Yeah I know what you mean; I am *reasonably* sure that I could have fixed it myself. However like I said I *need* my pc, and I cannot afford a new one so the shop it is.

Better safe that sorry; spesh when you are a big spaz with computers like me !

Is it sorted yet?

Alas no... I poned them this morning and was told that it could be several daus and I will definitely loose all my data dagnamit.

Oh well serves me right for not backing stuff up properly.

Still not back today dagnamit... how long am I going to have to wait. Good job we have BBCi at work!

Yesssss!!!!!

It is finally fixed and I can get it back tomorrow... how I have missed being able to waste my life surfing the web at home.... hooray!

...

Guess what?

Finally got it back today and it started a catelogue of problems. First of all the CD Writer is not recognised by windows. I reckon it has become disconnected and that is something I can probably fix when I get back from work.

Next the mouse is broke so I had to go and buy a new one today (pretty chuffed with the wireless one I got on the cheap though ).

Secondly I started to re-install stuff; and within 5 mins of getting back online at home; before I could download any security patches I got the Blaster virus....

B*llox!

Nuts.

Any joy yet?