ok ive got a problem. my computer is acting up. it wont load windows. im on my cell right now. i use my cell as a modem. last night i ran an antivirus scan using avg. tonight i go to turn on my computer and it wont do anything. it brings me to a window that says that windows was not shut down properly and gives me a chouce of what i want to do . safe mode, safe with networking, safe with comand prompt, last known config and start windows normally. none of them work. they all do the same thing, act like there loading but when they would normally bring up windows the screen is just black. the mouse moves the arrow but nothing else. all you see is the arrow and a black screen. please help i really hate using my cell for the net when i could use my computer.
you can call me on my cell or im me your cell and i will call you. mine is 574-849-1180
PS2 have you tried reloading windows from your computers windows disk yet?
dounds like a dying hard drive.
Me...the computer geed...mines been rebooting on its own lately.
David
Quote from: YellowJacket! on April 30, 2008, 08:40:30 AM
dounds like a dying hard drive.
Me...the computer geed...mines been rebooting on its own lately.
David
thats not what i wanted to hear. i dont have the cash for a new computer. plus its a few years old. its only got a 30g hard drive now. it took several hours to update the soft ware the last time i had to restart it. it only had service pack one in it. it would be nice to get a new one but there not cheap.
you can buy a new hardrive for around $100 for a 500GB sized one. If you really want to go cheap go to a computer liquidation place and see what they have. A refurbished drive is somewhat cheaper but there is the risk that it may not last as long and the warranty is short or none. But that didn't stop me from getting refurbished hard drives for my system. They are about 4-5 years old (40 GB ea) and are working fine. Usually you can de debranded drives that are made by the major mfg's but much cheaper also.
You can also look into refurbished computers.
Check out craigslist for good local deals aswell.
Lastly, what I would do is if you have multiple hard drives I would disconnect all except the one for where Windows is loaded and then just try re-installing Windows onto that drive and start afresh again. Then reconnecty the other drives that have your data on them. If you only have the one drive and have important stuff on it that wasn't backed up (you do do back ups right, like we all do right? ::) ::) ) then just go ahead and buy a larger new drive and install Windows on that and then see if youcan save any data of your old drive. Don't forget that you should NOT have the old drive connected to the system when doing this last part as you don't want to accidently wipe out info on it.
Best of luck
Robert
I still say to reload windows from your cd. DO NOT do a FORMAT, just reinstall your windows.
Most likely all that has happened is that your drive has gotten fragmented and parts of the boot sector have been moved to another section of the disk which is making Windows not be able to find it when it is trying to boot up.
Most hard drives will last for 5-10 years if they are properly maintained. About once per month you should run the defrag program.
Quote from: dj on April 30, 2008, 09:35:29 AM
I still say to reload windows from your cd. DO NOT do a FORMAT, just reinstall your windows.
Most likely all that has happened is that your drive has gotten fragmented and parts of the boot sector have been moved to another section of the disk which is making Windows not be able to find it when it is trying to boot up.
Most hard drives will last for 5-10 years if they are properly maintained. About once per month you should run the defrag program.
PS2 and I talked on the phone earlier. Its a compaq and while upgrading to a bigger drive may be a good option, older computer BIOS's dont support the larger dirve.
My first suggestion was to remove the drive and hook it up to another computer via a USB adapter and copy over his documents to back them up. then do a scan disk to check the drive for errors.
Many Compaq restord disks give only one option and that is to do a full restore which wipes the drive and reinstalls the OS. Some have the option of "repairing" a setup but that usually leaves you with a "windows.old" folder full of your old programs and docs and on a 30 gig drive can take up a chunk.
Second suggestion was to remove all peripherals except KB, mouse, video card (if there is one) and any add in cards. then try to reboot. In my many years of experience, this will sometimes solve failures to boot related to a bad piece of hardware.
David
well the computer is back up and running. thanks david and dj. ended up having to do a full system restore. only thing i lost was system updates and my anti virus. no biggie ill re down load them. it took over an hour just to download avg the last time. ill have to wait till after 9pm to start it cause thats when my free min. start. (cellphone is my modem) my moms computer wouldnt connect to the net either when i got home from work. just had to reset the modem. happens every so often.
so thanks all.
Glad we could help.
It was nice taliking to you also.
Take Care,
David
yes, Im glad I could help
:P
Glad to hear you are back up and running again.
Quote from: dj on April 30, 2008, 09:35:29 AM
Most likely all that has happened is that your drive has gotten fragmented and parts of the boot sector have been moved to another section of the disk which is making Windows not be able to find it when it is trying to boot up.
Just a couple of cents here:
If a windows system gives you boot options at all, then your boot sector is fine.
If the windows system doesn't load with any of the available boot options it gives you, then windows is screwed. (when is it not?)
If your boot sector was hosed, you would only see something like -- "Non-system disk or disk error.... insert disk and press ENTER."
On a system with Windows ME or lower (i.e. W98, W95, W3.xx, W3.x, or DOS X.XX), and your boot sector is hosed, the usual fix would be to boot to A: and execute FDISK /MBR.
Now, if the CMOS info is correct for the drive, this would "rebuild" the master boot record and you'd be in business.
Another note: One the older BIOS's that didn't support LDA (Logical Disk Addressing), there was a trick I used to use. Instead of using the acual numbers from the drive specs. We would half the cylinders and double the heads. This would 'fool' the BIOS for the correct drive size. But this hasn't been an issue since the advent of AUTO detecting HDD's in CMOS. This has been.... what?.... 13 years now?
FYI (For Yall's Info)
dang
all this time I thought the apostrophe was ya'lls
It is, unless it implies ownership. Then it's Ya'll's
Brian
It's really y'all's.
I am often amazed at the poor use of the apostrophe. I see it often in signs and lots of advertising materials. Makes me think that if the producer of the item or the owner of the store is not smart enough to get the grammar correct, is he (she) smart enough to know about the product?
In general, the apostrophe in a contraction takes the place of the missing letters. In possessives, it goes before the s for most singular possessive nouns and after the s if the possessive is plural. An apostrophe is unnecessary (even erroneous) when used in a plural word that does not denote possession (unless it is a contraction). Granted, it is one of the more obscure and difficult punctuation rules in the english language. Like most usage rules, there are exceptions.
H2O
Thats funny, all this time i've thought the crux of the biscuit is the apostrophe :o ???
Learn something every day :D
apostrophe abuse is widespread :'(
....................................................but there is hope for a cure in our lifetime......
.... http://www.apostropheabuse.com
Quote from: Tanno on May 02, 2008, 06:45:58 PM
It's really y'all's.
I know, I was yanking his leg ;D
H20, you make me wish I had been paying attention ,in school. Actually ,it probably wouldn't have made much difference as I didn't become much of a student until I was in my early thirty's, and started learning about stuff I was interested in.
Well, my math skills are about on par with those who never learned how to properly read and write the english language. I was a solid B student through high school, but got Ds in algebra & geometry. English classes were never less than an A. Writing has always come very easy for me. On this forum, I generally write with no proofreading - except for when I know my fingers hit the wrong keys.
My brother had difficulties learning to read. He was 5.5 years older than me. When he was held back in first grade, he would come home from school and try to teach me what he was learning. I could read & write at age 3. Drove my parents absolutely nuts when we were on road trips. I could point out any dime store or fast food joint - & call it by the right name. Started in on the Hardy Boys series in first grade & read lots of sci-fi books when I was in 4th - 5th grade. However, reading law books is pure torture. Legalese is a language unto itself! Judges would do well to learn how to write in english. I can't recall the case - or even what subject it was in - but one opinion I read had a sentence with a quintuple negative! :o (Odd number of negatives mean it's negative - even number is positive.)
H2O
Quote from: Brian Moffet on May 02, 2008, 10:30:16 PM
Quote from: Tanno on May 02, 2008, 06:45:58 PM
It's really y'all's.
I know, I was yanking his leg ;D
And I'm not biteing my nails when someone types something wrong, either. I'm guilty of it too, ya know.
I just now recently got into "texting". Mostly between my wife and I, but also between my kids and co workers. At work we use a text paging system that relies on sending an email from a portable work station through an exchange server which **eventually** ends up on our text pagers. So, we took mattters into our own hands and decided that since most of us have unlimited texting, we would do that since it was quicker.
Well, ket me tell y'all; texting is a horrible influence on the english language. Words are butchered, abbreviated and truncated into oblivion just to keep it under the 160 character limit.
I also browse around on a few computer sites and there it is horrible. Don't know if people are posting from their phones or ina perpetual state of text-mind, but it gets to be downright unreadable.
Spelling and grammar here are leaps and bounds ahead of some other sites I frequent.
David
lol wtf
LOL WUT? (Caption for my avatar)
roflmao ;D
Personally I think this texting is an abomination to the English language. Why would I want to go to all the trouble to peck out a message when I'm holding a phone in my hand , and can call the person and actually talk to them?
My guess is that you wouldn't in a meeting, watching a movie, or taking a test. That's where most of the whipper-snappers do it.
Scandinavia has been on the top of SMS-usage for many years. I believe that they can be categorised in three piles:
- You want to say or ask someone something that not is important enough to demand the attention from the other party just now.
- You are sending a postcard/email, like jokes or telling buddies about spotted police, birds or Visions
- You are sending URLs, phone numbers or part numbers or something else so that the other party can receive it exact without pen and paper.
My son called me last night to tell me that his GF's mothers laptop says HDD 0 Disk failure, please reinsert disk and try again.
Hmmmm...looks like Ill be replacing a hard disk on a laptop soon.
David
Quote from: YellowJacket! on May 04, 2008, 09:12:01 AM
My son called me last night to tell me that his GF's mothers laptop says HDD 0 Disk failure, please reinsert disk and try again.
Hmmmm...looks like Ill be replacing a hard disk on a laptop soon.
David
Yes, it's a possibility.
Get into CMOS and see if the HDD is seen properly, then- open `er up and check the cable(s). Disconnect and Reconnect the HDD cable(s) 3 times. You never know, it might be revived then.
FDISK is a powerful tool. When you start FDISK and the menu is shown, the HDD is good in CMOS. Otherwise you would get "No Fixed Disk Present" and no menu.
You can get that much out of it no matter what OS is on it. If it's got a filesystem of anything other than FAT16 or FAT32, then FDISK can't do anything with the partitions, but it will show you that they are there as 'unknown'.
Anyway, I know you didn't ask, but I'm offering the help.
Quote from: Rick G on May 04, 2008, 12:01:09 AM
can call the person and actually talk to them?
For some things, it's cheaper. My phone charges me .25 per minute for talking, .15 for a text. Of course if they don't answer my text, advising me about breakfast and when they finally got in, then I'll call ;D
Brian
Quote from: Tanno on May 04, 2008, 02:45:30 PM
Quote from: YellowJacket! on May 04, 2008, 09:12:01 AM
My son called me last night to tell me that his GF's mothers laptop says HDD 0 Disk failure, please reinsert disk and try again.
Hmmmm...looks like Ill be replacing a hard disk on a laptop soon.
David
Yes, it's a possibility.
Get into CMOS and see if the HDD is seen properly, then- open `er up and check the cable(s). Disconnect and Reconnect the HDD cable(s) 3 times. You never know, it might be revived then.
FDISK is a powerful tool. When you start FDISK and the menu is shown, the HDD is good in CMOS. Otherwise you would get "No Fixed Disk Present" and no menu.
You can get that much out of it no matter what OS is on it. If it's got a filesystem of anything other than FAT16 or FAT32, then FDISK can't do anything with the partitions, but it will show you that they are there as 'unknown'.
Anyway, I know you didn't ask, but I'm offering the help.
Thanks for the help offer. ;D I've owned a computer repair business for 14 years. ;D ;D
Laptops hosed. She forgot to say that she also dropped it. LCD hinge, LCD cover and corner of LCD are all cracked. (thrown in frustration....) In any event, she went to staples and got a dual core 1 gig ram 100 gig hdd laptop for $400.00.
Much better than what she had the was over 5 years old. ;D
David
oh, forgot to mention that the BIOS reported 0 fixed drives (auto detect) so the drive was hosed. Could have pulled it and hooked it up to a USB connector and to my shop PC but she did'nt want to bother.
David
It's funny. I know an incredible amount about computers, but almost nothing about Windows :-)
Brian
Quote from: YellowJacket! on May 04, 2008, 07:17:06 PM
Laptops hosed. She forgot to say that she also dropped it. LCD hinge, LCD cover and corner of LCD are all cracked. (thrown in frustration....) In any event, she went to staples and got a dual core 1 gig ram 100 gig hdd laptop for $400.00.
Much better than what she had the was over 5 years old. ;D
David
bring it to my house..a little bondo, a little pain't some bailing wire...good as new!
Quote from: Lucky on May 04, 2008, 09:21:43 PM
bring it to my house..a little bondo, a little pain't some bailing wire...good as new!
Yes, but will it have flames! ;D
Brian (never knew my avatar would be so apropos...)
Quote from: Lucky on May 04, 2008, 09:21:43 PM
Quote from: YellowJacket! on May 04, 2008, 07:17:06 PM
Laptops hosed. She forgot to say that she also dropped it. LCD hinge, LCD cover and corner of LCD are all cracked. (thrown in frustration....) In any event, she went to staples and got a dual core 1 gig ram 100 gig hdd laptop for $400.00.
Much better than what she had the was over 5 years old. ;D
David
bring it to my house..a little bondo, a little pain't some bailing wire...good as new!
sorry....Jessica claimed dibbs first. Bondo offer still good though?
;D
David
oh, i don't need a laptop, i've got one i don't use now.. i just want to Visionize it, lol
Then Yamabond would be in order, eh?
Quote from: Rick G on May 04, 2008, 12:01:09 AM
Why would I want to go to all the trouble to peck out a message when I'm holding a phone in my hand , and can call the person and actually talk to them?
I think theres something in the water today i actually agree with rick on this :O
My computer repair experience paid off yesterday handsomly.
One of the medical offices I used to work at uses tablet PC's for their electronic medical records. They have about 20 which I set up for them just before I left the parctice. I went there yesterday to visit my wife (she still works there) and in the managers office (my old home) was a stack of tablet PC's. Seizing the opportunity, I asked what was wrong with them ans she told me that they were all the broken ones and were out of warranty and too expensive to repair.
I took the concept of having a vision parts bike and applied it to having parts computers and combined the two. I told her that I could probably combine some of them together and get al least a couple working. She gave me five. I told her tha tthe cost would be that I get to keep at least one if I could fix at least two from the parts. A few hours later, I had three perfectly working tablet PC's for her, one for myself! Had one left over for parts....looked like it was thrown against a wall or something because it had a badly shattered screen, case and unmountable (by any means) hard drive.
There really nice systems with a 14" pen touch screen, 1.2 GHz CPU, 512mb RAM (Of course mine now has 1gig), 60 gig hdd's, ABG WiFi and bluetooth. What I like the most about it though is that it DOES NOT have an attached keyboard so I do all my work with the pen. Its about the size of a legal pad and about as thick as three legal pads stacked on top of each other and weighs just inder 2 lbs, so it will be awesome for taking digital notes on in school. I also kept the only 5 hour extended battery. ( D; )
David
Quote from: inanecathode on May 08, 2008, 07:52:01 AM
Quote from: Rick G on May 04, 2008, 12:01:09 AM
Why would I want to go to all the trouble to peck out a message when I'm holding a phone in my hand , and can call the person and actually talk to them?
I think theres something in the water today i actually agree with rick on this :O
Never been much of a fan for phones, think I got it from my dad. :p Not a fan of texts either but least they're fairly quick and inconspicuous for the most part as well as less invasive to doing other things.
Inane , there's hope for you yet!! ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;)