askerian | Computer help please?

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Computer help please?

sarolynne's desktop computer is giving her the blue screen of death. Amongst other things of importance, all her stories and story notes are on it, and since the CD burner and the external harddrive are both dead, she hasn't been able to make a backup in a long while.

I dunno about you guys, but my first reaction to that was AUGH. As a writer, it's the equivalent of a guy wincing in deep horror and automatically crossing his legs as he hears about someone else getting nailed in the privates with a baseball bat. ~__~

She's getting a registry file failure that won't let her start Windows XP. She tried starting in safe mode but even then it still failed.

She says the error she's getting seems like it's normally associated with trying to install incompatable hardware, or trying to totally restart the system fresh, which she didn't do either.

If anyone has a suggestion, she'll be happy to hear it. She's got some access to the internet via her father's computer; I'll forward stuff to her. (or she can check this entry, i dunno XD; ) She's going to be offline for a few hours starting now, so I can't give more details, but she will once she comes back. I'm just asking now because, well, by then I'll be asleep. =__=;; Mmh, the joys of living in different time zones.

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See if she can get a knoppix cd. It is a free linux distro that runs off the cd drive. When my computer died I had my sister burn me a copy & I was able to rescue everything off my hard drive to an external one. Many, many hours of anime rescued. It uses your hardware but not Windows at all. It also can't be infected by viruses, since your not writing anything to a hard drive.

Whoa, i've never heard of this. I'll have to look into it. It does sound very shiny.

... except I don't think she has an external drive at the moment DX but, that's still a very good idea to explore. Thank you.

I think you can put it on a usb thumb drive as well, but I'm not sure. Would have to re-read the instructions.

If she needs an external drive to save the files to, it shouldn't be too expensive to get a 1GB or 2GB flash drive, especially if all she really wants to save right now is her story information and the like. I have a 1-gig that I use for college - I've been using it for all my class information for almost three years and it's still nowhere near full. Zipping the files can help save some more space too.

You can do the same thing with any brand of linux - most you can get live cds of, you download the ISO file and burn it to cd, and then run off the cd. Sometimes you can run off of flash drives if the cd drive is too busted, but i'm not sure on details of that.

Ubuntu is more user friendly than knoppix though.

but she'd still have to pick up an external drive. Sounds like her windows installations is hosed. nothing to do but reinstall it.

As long as it's just window and not a hardware problem, she can probably reinstall it eventually... Would she be able to save her .doc files or whatever other format she might be taking writing notes in though? That's what really worries her/me the most at the moment, I think.

I couldn't read some of the files I moved but I could move them from the hard drive to the external one just fine.

She can probably copy everything on her computer if it is a windows issue. The entire drive. Actually, the problem will end up being that she will have a bajillion files she has never heard of.

One more tip for future crash-proofing? When she reinstalls her system (or gets a new one), have her partition the hard drive so that there are 2 logical drives on it (a C drive and a D drive). Then store ALL the data on the D drive, not in the "My Documents" path where Windows tries to stuff everything by default.

With a two-drive solution, you can back up the data files (and just the data files) really easily by just backing up that data drive. AND you can reinstall the OS as many times as you want (on the C drive) without ever touching your data itself (on the D drive).

An external drive backup is still going to be essential, of course -- some day it might be the hard drive itself that goes kablooey -- but the two-logical-drive setup makes the maintenance easier in the meantime.

...I should just write up a "lessons learned about how to make sure you don't lose anything when your computer inevitably crashes" set of guidelines one of these days. Well, actually, I *have,* but it's at work and I can't link to it without massively outing myself, soooo I should rewrite it for LJ purposes one of these days...

You can have windows put the My Documents folder on the D partition as well.

... I'd love to see those guidelines. because, um. *knocks on wood. hard.* DX

I had this problem with my laptop...I was able to get my data off my hard disk, but I had to completely reinstall Windows once I'd made that emergency backup (via a friend with a special cable thingy that plugged into the hard drive and allowed him to see my hard drive as an external drive to his machine).

The hard disk connector cable costs about USD$20, BTW, so if either you or Sarolynne are comfortable messing about with computer hardware, it would be a hell of a lot cheaper than using a data recovery service.

I would STRONGLY recommend purchasing an external disk drive and a copy of Norton Ghost to make automatic backups, for future reference.

Ohh, thank you for the ideas.

I think she's gonna use a cable and see what she can grab that way -- dunno yet.

Glad I could help! Basically, that registry error indicates that the Windows XP operating system has crashed and burned, but your hard disk is likely still intact, and just needs to be connected to a viable operating system.

I saw that someone upthread recommended a lightweight Linux version that fits on a USB drive. That might work, too, to revive your computer long enough to do an emergency data backup from the hard disk.

Boot from a Windows CD and run a repair. Or plug the hard drive into another computer, back up the important files, then nuke and reload and know better for next time.

I've never tried to run a repair because I've heard horror stories of people losing all their data... have you ever done one? *curious*

Tons.

What a Windows Repair does is basically reload the OS. It doesn't touch any non-OS files. It will not fix a physically defective harddrive or most malware, and it will not wipe any personal data.

I am not sure where you got the impression that a Windows repair would wipe anything.

I've never had Windows Repair kill anything, but then I've never had Windows Repair actually work for me either -- I seem to have the kind of magic computer-killing hands usually that manage to hose something that's just hardware-critical enough to keep the repair CDs from managing to run at all. (Insert personal magnetism joke here, I guess...)

Yeah, the downside of Windows Repair is also the upside. It only touches the OS itself.

Most computer issues are caused by malware or hardware failure nowadays, which Windows repair won't do diddly for.

As for the personal magnetism? Had the same trouble myself with Apple computers before OSX came out. I'd walk by a row of iMacs or PowerPCs and half would restart while the other half showed a sad picture of a bomb. Same thing happened with my dad, it was downright spooky.

O, I'm sure some idiot thought they were doing a repair and they were actually doing a wipe, and then ranted to me about it and it got all stuck in my head. *shrugs*

no idea really

Ha ha! That, I can definitely believe.

There's also the fact that sometimes hard drives die. It's sad, but happens to all of us in time.

*knocks on wood*

*has all of her old hard drives storing her anime as internal drives*

Um... in my experience, the Windows (XP, at least) "Repair Install" will lose all of the "this program is installed" information, and at least some of the Start-menu shortcuts, and possibly some of the Registry information, for pretty much anything that doesn't come with Windows. The programs themselves are still there, along with all of the actual data, but they're harder to access and in some cases might no longer work correctly.

I can easily see how someone could mistake that for a wipe.

Sounds like a mess to cleanup...

How do you tell if the data is still here, though? because she tried to repair and it looks like everythng is gone. (i didn't get many details. ~__~)

The most important thing to do right now is retrieve the data, because it it is very likely that once you start messing with software and os repair that it will get deleted. Blue screens in my experience are most common with a bad hard drive, or once in a while, bad RAM.
Maybe this will help:

on blue screen
http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090518005211AAUcNbD
on data backup
http://laptoplogic.com/resources/5-ways-to-retrieve-data-off-a-crashed-hard-drive

Try to get the data backed up before you take it to a repair place if you can't fix it yourself. Most companies charge an arm and a leg for it otherwise:(

Guhh. Thank you for the links. x___x

No problem. I hope it all works out!

I'd pull the hard drive too, and get the cable adapter to plug it up directly to another system. Get the data copied off and then try the system repair. Good luck... I had to 'cross my legs' too. Ouch! >_<;

yeah, this is what I was going to suggest too.

After having had many many MANY systems die on me over the years (I swear the things are allergic to me), I found it easiest to physically pull the drive and plug it into another Windows system. I've also used the Knoppix workaround, but the trouble with the Knoppix workaround is that (a) it requires at least a few drivers to match in order to get either the CD/DVD drive or the USB port to boot, which wasn't the case with the laptop I had to try it on, and (b) once I got Knoppix booted, it didn't want to read the Windows file system for beans. NTFS kept telling Knoppix "no, you're not allowed to see anything other than the fact that the file exists." I managed to hack my way around it by virtue of having spent 5 years working in a place that rewrote Unix operating systems from the ground up, BUT I doubt your ordinary Windows-using mortal who shudders at the thought of a command line would be able to find the way through that mess.

Plugging the drive into another Windows system has two really big advantages:
1) Windows plays nicer with Windows than with anything else; as long as the file system itself isn't corrupted on the hard drive, you should be able to read and copy all that information over no problem.

2) If you're working on an OS on a functioning computer, you already have the drivers and (probably) the hard drive space you need to make a backup then and there. (In contrast, when you boot from Knoppix, you're booting off a read-only system AND if you have a DVD burner drive and your Knoppix CD is in that drive, you don't have an easy way to get the stuff you want to save from the Windows drive onto your removable media unless you ALSO have some kind of USB-based drive, which then needs its own Knoppix drivers located and installed, yadda yadda.)

Two cents and quite a bit of spare change... :)

I think that's what she's trying to do, plugging her hard drive into another computer. I hope it works. x__x I remember one of my friends used mine to recover hers that way once, but man, that was so long ago and i've never been very good at that stuff. She was the one who knew what she was doing. Is it complicated?

♥ Thank you, hon.

For getting data off a Windows PC that won't boot, I'd agree with the guy who suggests using a live CD (not necessarily Knoppix). It means you see and copy all the files on the PC from this different operating system, so you're not having to do anything risky with the already-buggered-up Windows install.

The first semi-decent explanation Google found me of how to make a CD to do that is this one: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/use-ubuntu-live-cd-to-backup-files-from-your-dead-windows-computer/

Hope that helps!

♥ Thank you, it does ^^

Have you ever done a system restore? It takes the system to a previous specified date and wipes everything after that date clean. It doesn't affect personal files but will affect any updates to the OS and any other programme, like Norton, Office, or such. Those updates will have to be re-updated.

However if Saro's comp is going straight to a blue screen on booting, then it won't work unless she can activate the "Safe Mode boot" at the beginning of booting, which will allow her to access system files.

If she can, then the way to do a system restore is go to accessories then tools and the programme is in there.

However, it is recommended that even after restoring it should be taken in to a professional to have it completely scanned for viruses and worms. It is most likely that she has a virus or worm that caused her system to crash that her protections can't handle.

Now, about the cable that someone suggested for retrieving the personal files Saro doesn't want to lose. Unless it comes with its own programme it will not protect the retrieving computer from the virus or worm that has infected Saro's computer. This is why it should be taken to a professional.

oh noes! :-(
I second (third?) the motion to do it via hardware. pull the drive and access it as an internal secondary in another computer (move its cables with it), or as external (need to buy a case/cable). either way you are using the other system's operating system so bypasses the registry issue completely. I've had bsod or boot failure and this worked for me. I recovered 3 or 4 drives that way actually. If it still works, it can be used inside another computer, or in external case via USB, or cleaned up & reinstalled in original system after you get all the data off, depending on the problem.

Since she has file corruption in OS, I would suggest only copy her personal files, not Windows, and screening them for virus just in case. If that HD is starting to mechanically fail, there may not be much use time left until it dies completely instead of failing on random files. virus screening first will work it hard, a risk - so she may want to copy first - a different risk.

Best of luck to her!!

edited to add - most systems older than couple of years or so will not boot from USB unless you change BIOS settings or update BIOS. Most people are not familiar enough to do that.

Edited 2009-10-16 02:56 (UTC)

Um, this is going to sound really weird and I am VERY not a computer person so you may not want to take this advice, but ... I would put the laptop in some sort of plastic bag so water doesn't get in it, and stick it into the freezer overnight.

I have friends who swear by this method when they get bluescreen registry errors. Otherwise, when I had the same problem earlier this year, somebody more tech-savvy than I put Linux on my laptop, got all my files off with Linux, then reformatted it.

(Then my laptop decide to manifest three other problems within three months and I had to get a new laptop anyways ...)

That method is for hard drive failures - and its a last resort... Only if you are 100% sure its the hard drive, and it very rarely works. Don't go doing that just because you have a blue screen.

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Computer help please?

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