My computer=PWNED :(

[rockmanj]

My windows installation is pretty much done for; i know i have to format my C drive, cause i cant even get to the loading screen, but i want to salvage some of my media files. is it possible to load a command prompt, and copy the files to my external hdd? or is all lost??

[BioAlien]

Can you boot up your computer from another hard drive? (Which have windows installed on it)
That way you Should be able to acces your fucked up hard drive and take the files you want to keep, and place them in your other hard drive.

[Iridani]

Do you have another computer that you can put the old harddrive in to extract the files you want?

[rockmanj]

Can you boot up your computer from another hard drive? (Which have windows installed on it)
That way you Should be able to acces your fucked up hard drive and take the files you want to keep, and place them in your other hard drive.

You mean hook my computer up to one of my friends', and have it treat my comp as as like a HDD? how could i do that?

And i just plan on formatting the hard drive and reinstalling windows ASAP, provided i can salvage my files.

[Board of Command]

Take the drive out and plug it into another computer. The other computer will just recognize it as a regular data drive. Take your files out, put your drive back in your machine, format.

[rockmanj]

geez, that sounds like a lot of work...b/c im lazy, but thanks for the all the help!

BTW, do u think booting from the XP installations disk is worth trying? I was thinking i could boot, copy it to my HDD, then afterwards, format. Or is that too risky?

[LaZie]

Why don't you try repairing Windows before reformating to see if that will help?

[rockmanj]

That's the 1st thing i tried...it's incorrigible. I shoouldnt have waited this long to not format it, but i was waiting to buy a new HDD so that i wouldnt lose all my data. But i cant even start windows, so i just want to salvage what i can, then format.

[Kraco]

Then buy the new HD, install windows on it, then plug in your old hd as a secondary drive and copy the stuff over to the new drive, format the old drive and continue to use it as extra storage space.

Unless you are talking about a laptop...

[rockmanj]

Then buy the new HD, install windows on it, then plug in your old hd as a secondary drive and copy the stuff over to the new drive, format the old drive and continue to use it as extra storage space.

Unless you are talking about a laptop...


yea...it is

[?igma]

I don't know much about laptops, but isn't there a way to connect one to a regular PC as if it was "just"a datasource ?

[itadakimasu]

you could try booting up a livecd like pclinux, or knoppix to see if it will read your hard drive if all else is failing, its worth a shot. if you google pclinux it is free to dl and you can just burn it to a cd and boot off that cd into a full OS from where if your hdd isn't trashed you should be able to pull files off of it

[darkshadow]

your problem was salvagable untill you said laptop, now if you cant take it apart and take out the harddrive you are indeed pwned, no fix.
/thread.

THOUGH, what bbaucom said could work, but just get a bootable xp instead :/, there are releases that are fully bootable of a dvd.

[?igma]

There's no way he can get an external HD to master ? or isn't that allowed for USB ?

[Deadfire]

There's no way he can get an external HD to master ? or isn't that allowed for USB ?

Indeed there is he needs to set the laptop to boot off USB, Alot of laptops have this in the Bios boot options.

As well getting the hard drive is simple in most cases, If I can get a model number I can possibly pull instructions on how to do it. As well most computer places now a days sell external shells for laptop hard drives (2.5) and with return policies like they are you can use it and return it and no pain to the pocket.

The other option like some people have said is installing a linux copy on the HD. Most Linux installs (Fedora comes to mine here) allows you to just adjust the size of the partions already present in order to install. Then once you boot into Linux, mount your windows partion and there you go.

The 3rd options is like the first is taking the hard drive out and putting in a external and the just hooking it up to a friends computer.


If the hard drive is however unreadible then...well you are fucked

[rockmanj]

If the hard drive is however unreadible then...well you are fucked

Funny you should say, that...as its unreadable (i took the hd out, put it in my external shell, and no dice), so im pretty much screwed, and I'll be getting a new hd tomorrow. But another question for u guys...what about data recovery? i have some really important files on that HD that i probably cannot get again, and i was wondering what options there are for that. I know its expensive, but im willing to pay for it.

[darkshadow]

data recovery? 100$ per gb...

[Board of Command]

Damn, that's a lot! I knew it was expensive but not that much. A friend of mine did data recovery somewhere but didn't mention how much it was.

[Hikyuu]

Laptops are a bitch to deal with..I've lost alot of info because I choose to use a laptops instead of desktops. All the connections on the laptop are smaller and everything is shrunk and harder to handle. If your not willing to put out that kinda money you should just bite the bullet and reformat. Some laptops come with a factory restore setting ( its a partition set aside on the HDD just for if you fuck up.. I know all recent Dells have them(which is why they dont' automatically give you a windows cd with your laptop)). Anyway, best of luck in solving your endeavor.

[itadakimasu]

since you're posting im assuming you do have access to the internet on a working computer. Read my previous post and give that a try. Not too long ago my gf gave me her moms hd that wouldn't boot and i couldn't get it to boot or access it through pclinux or as a slave, i did some googling though and found a couple very useful hd tools :

ADRC_Data_Recovery_Tools_v1.01
ADRC_Hard_Disk_Checker_v1.0

very small prog, the data recovery tools allowed me to make a complete image of the hard drive (40gb) and then i took that image and put it onto the hard drive and then it would boot. $100 per gb.... i joked that she owed me money :) but as a running joke we both dont accept money as payments for things hehe


ANYHOW. On topic. Computer = pwnd, yep.

I completely raped my computer last night. I got a new video card (x1950 xt sapphire) and this thing is gigantic. could not get it to seat completely into the pci-e slot and so i unscrewed the mobo and lifted it up some and then the card went into the slot however when i started the computer it gave me just garbled nonsense on the screen... grrrr. i ended up removing it and then booted off of the onboard card and it booted fine into windows, was going to install the onboard drivers for my vista and cmputer restarted so i was pushing del to get into the bios to check on memory settings and instead of bios coming up, this gigabyte quick recovery feature they have started to run... so i turned off my computer... then, no boot. i tried taking out the battery to reset cmos but the damn thing would not budge. i jumpered the jumper to reset it ( manual says you can do either way) and nothing .... then when starting it it sounded like power was kicking down really low after the initial startup.

this morning, i put in my old mobo and it did the same thing that the other did so i am hoping that my motherboard is not totally trashed since the other mobo did the same thing... maybe it is the powersuppoly... or maybe i am grounding out on the case... IDFK... at the end of the night though my computer was totally raped and in pieces. (will post picture later)

[?igma]

Best way to handle it is to backtrack your own actions.

Did you touch anything other than the videocard you mention.
-If so, what were they and are you sure you didn't by accident disconnect a powercable that's supposed to be there ?
Did you use the videocard on your old motherboard (assumption false)


What you said yourself, either one of your other parts is showing malfunctions, or you simply missed something while operating the Motherboard.

I can tell you from my own experience though, having a case where the mother board is simply not placed high enough (2 milimeters for me ) and you force it, it could cost you the life of your equipment.
When you do reopen it, make sure you have a table, clean, with plenty of light and room to put your parts, so you can backtrack every step you take.

[itadakimasu]

ok... got home last night and slowly put my system back together and it all is working fine. I was able to snap off the metal "things" that were keeping the video card from seating correctly and now it snaps right into place, but i need to get a new power supply and im out of town until tomorrow. but, the computer is alive. The geh recovery stuff damaged my vista install and this morning when i left my house it was in the process of repairing. so hopefully when i get home it is going to be up and running.

[rockmanj]

thanks again for all the help...I ended up replacing my HD, and it seems to be working fine now. But i had to do a clean install >.<, get all the drivers, etc. I guess i should be happy that i have a computer again; hopefully i can recover the info from my old HD.

[masamuneehs]

my laptop screen totally bit it today. came home this morning and it was all black, draining the battery and all sorts of restarts fail to correct it. i'll have to send it in to Dell for further diagnostics and hopefully a repair that doesnt include wiping my hard drive...

[Kraco]

You could take the HD temporarily out and copy all essential stuff to the HD of your desktop system just in case. That way you could restore it even if some fool wiped it clean.

[Animeniax]

What kind of Dell is it? If it's a Latitude (and most likely applies to Inspirons too), the ribbon cable that connects the LCD screen to the motherboard can wiggle loose. It's easy to open the case (remove the plastic bar along the top of the keyboard, then remove the keyboard) to expose the innards and find the connector at the upper left of the laptop body. You could also take apart the screen and check where the ribbon cable connects to the LCD, that also tends to get loose. As a test for the first problem, push down on the upper left corner of the plastic bar that runs along the top of the keyboard area and see if you get anything on the display.

[masamuneehs]

it's a shitspiron 6000. and, after i took out the battery, memory and the modem and was about to remove the hard drive, I found out I had to keep the modem and memory in. So I put them back in and tried my luck, putting the battery back in. All's been fine since. Weird...