Never thought I'd feel, uhh, I dunno... kinda wonderin' what to do next now that I've fixed my computer.

Ahhh: My computer. It was not malware, wasn't a virus, wasn't any type of bug or something picked up.

It was a massive hardware failure. Two boot sectors were fried, totally wiped out.

The manufacturer sent new parts, and I replaced them and: whatcha know? The machine works.

The manufacturer also insisted that the only way to recover the data from the fried drive was by taking it to a third party for repair. No, nu-uh, or however they want to say it. My warranty wasn't with a third-party and the manufacturer wasn't going to pay for the recovery and, too, there was no need to take it to someone else.

I did it myself, just as I told the manufacturer I could and would. I recovered every file that I wanted.

Now, I just have to find the momentum and install some more software, etc.

Hi Bobbi!

Congrats! You should be proud of yourself for completing a project most wouldnt even attempt.

Now that you are familiar with the hardware you can start looking at upgrades for your computer. Most everything nowadays is plug it in and load the drivers, and sometimes not even that lol.

You can add another hard drive, or even explore the possibilities of running a couple of hard drives in a raid configuration. Upgrade and add more memory, even find some sweet deals on a new mobo with cpu combos.

Uh oh here comes the grandkids!

I don't think I'm going to make any upgrades to this one; it's a laptop and... not one that I want to put a lot more of anything into. I'm running it as a skeptic these days, and will anticpate the HD to fry again - until it reaches that "magic" mark or, minimally, the point beyond when the first HD fried (slightly over one-half-year-old).

My desktop? Now, that's something I'll seriously consider doing as you mention .

Nothing about this laptop could have been easy, if someone were to ask the manufacturer. Of course, it could have been far less stressful if the phone jockeys hadn't behaved so arrogantly and as if they know-all, when, clearly they don't. Anyone who says that data cannot be recovered (especially after they've been told that the data is not corrupt), user-end, is full of y'know, that nasty stuff .

I do plan to do one thing, at least: As soon as I have time, I'm going to make a tutorial on data recovery. It tweaked me when one of the phone jockeys took great delight in relaying that he's lost count of how many times he's told "grandmas and grandpas that they cannot recover their grand babies photos." He should have said, "Sorry, folks. I don't know." Or, maybe, "I'll have to refer you to someone else because ... " he sure made an a$% of himself when he stuck his feet in his mouth while speaking with me.

I don't find it humorous that he was laughing as he was telling me about the "grandmas and grandpas." I feel for the people he mis-informed.

If I can do it with a fried (non-booting) drive, it'd be far easier on a drive that will boot.

Out of this, and his idiocy: An idea was born .

please do bobbi!

i have info on my old compaq pc that i need to get off. info that i sure don't want anyone at a pc shop to get a hold of.

the a drive won't write and i can't a cd to burn.

(banking info...on a computer that does not go online)

sorry...didn't mean to hyjack.

Yeah I have a laptop that is somewhat lacking in the memory department, but doing anything but using it till it craters is what im gonna do with it.

That is a great idea! Those customer service peoples are trippin most of the time. They read from scripts, and have no clue what the meaning of the words they just read to you mean.

Curious you might try putting the hard drive in to your desktop as a slave drive. I believe you then can look at drive.

Curious,

Does the computer - you're referencing that needs some first-aid - have a functioning CD/DVD drive? It doesn't matter that you can't burn to it, but only that one is installed and was working before things went haywire (not with the CD/DVD drive, I'm hoping).

If you wanna PM me a snail mail address, I've gotta tool that I believe will most likely work for you. It works like a charm. I can do the walk-through on how to use it, once you know that it will boot. And, even if the HD itself won't boot, this baby will bring it up .

i'll boot it up tomorrow and check everything. pm on the way.

I am impressed!

I practically have a nervous breakdown when I run into snags.

I really admire you Bobbi... you are one smart cookie!

MrsD., when a machine is as far fried as mine was, I look at it as: I have nothing to lose and, possibly, everything to gain by digging in.

VISTA, I will admit, has been the biggest headache in fixing. I had to go back and re-install the platform again (3 times total). Unless VISTA has its software bundled with SP1, and SP1 is one of the first updates installed, it will totally mess up the authentication of VISTA.

Anyone with VISTA who discovers that it has to be reinstalled: Get SP1 (from MS downloads) before doing additional MS updates.


Curious, I picked up a horrible cold - and it's probably related to a lack of sleep, stress, etc., from this. As soon as I am feeling better (and I do plan on resting this weekend), I'll definitely get the mail out to you - along with the how-to info. . PM is yours when its on its way.

I have been doing the install/reinstall go round of XP home since last week - tried to clean up extra partition and been messed up since - trying to get it to work right - and save all my files...

finally bought a disk doctor program so i could recover all my stuff and then copied everything to my spare hard drive.

then totally formatted main drive and did a clean install

so now it's working but I turned off updates part of my problem started when i backed up and cleaned up to do the XP SP3 update/upgrade

Read about it online before doing it - seems it has issues with AMD, ASUS and Dlink - I have all of those

So not getting SP3 again until after the bugs are fixed.

I am planning to pick up another HD to copy this whole HD & set up as a spare back up HD.
I had some stuff saved on a DVD & flash drive but couldn't use it to make any repairs to the main system.

Bobbi what is the program you used?