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Post by Exildo Wonsetler Briggs III on Dec 13, 2009 21:09:14 GMT -6
So I get home from Hedo I do late last night and find out my computer won't boot. Seems it no longer can "see" the hard drive and try as I might, I can't get it to boot from the hard drive anymore. I spent some time on the phone with Dell today as well as MANY hours running all sorts of diagnostics, but all the HARDWARE checks out fine. I think something corrupted my boot sector and I can't recover from it. I'm not going to put up with this shit anymore. Dual 1 TB drives in RAID configuration are going in tomorrow and I'm going to take the "dead" drive and see if I can get a few files from it. I have backups of all important data, but there are still some files I'd like to have. I haven't backed up my Contact list in Outlook in some time . . . crap! Damn computers!!  |
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Post by ♥ COVID-19♥ on Dec 13, 2009 21:18:11 GMT -6
Before you see if the HD is still usable, remember to run an anti-virus program on it to check for malicious software that may have installed itself on the Master Boot Record. You'll need software that can reliably check for MBR viruses. Otherwise, if you don't check for that first, you may find that if there *is* a virus, it will replicate itself wherever and whenever possible even if you no longer boot from that drive.
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Post by Exildo Wonsetler Briggs III on Dec 15, 2009 21:48:09 GMT -6
I fixed up the computer with two new 1TB drives configured in RAID 1 to mirror the data. Turns out (and I had forgotten) that the original two drives were configured in RAID 0 . . . had I realized that I would have changed it.
Live and learn.
I went ahead and installed Windows 7 with a clean install, no upgrade, and thus far it seems to be working OK. I first tried the 64 bit version, but my sound card was not compatible with it, so went back to the 32 bit version.
I literally took only about 10 minutes to install the OS . . . really fast. Maybe a little longer but I was sure something was wrong since it installed so fast. So far so good.
.............Bob
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Post by Captain Gary on Dec 16, 2009 17:34:29 GMT -6
How strange, the one comment I meant to make on the Win 7 thread was how LONG it took to install. 3-4 hours! Looking at online comments, that seemed to be normal. Those were upgrades, however. Maybe the fresh install is quicker.
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Post by Exildo Wonsetler Briggs III on Dec 16, 2009 23:55:51 GMT -6
How strange, the one comment I meant to make on the Win 7 thread was how LONG it took to install. 3-4 hours! Looking at online comments, that seemed to be normal. Those were upgrades, however. Maybe the fresh install is quicker. I'm sure there must be a difference between a virgin install and an upgrade. One comes with a lot of baggage, 'ya know? The couple of times I installed XP as a new installation took a couple of hours, what with all the damn downloads, updates, etc. I've also installed Office 2010 Beta, which is FREE until October 2010. So far Outlook seems pretty cool with several new features and a new look. Word is also very new, but I haven't played much with it. .........Bob |
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