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- 14 Oct 2006
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- 486
Can't you just plug your dead xp install drive into another pc and take control of the file system to retrieve your internet bookmark files?
Computer disasters
- Thread starter Jonny69
- Start date
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- 3 May 2004
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- 17,733
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- Kapitalist Republik of Surrey
What? Argh!!! Most places wanted like £200 for it.
It's not a problem, I can browse to the file in my ghost image. It's just the ballache of having to reinstall everything how I liked it because the image is corrupted somewhere. Acronis TrueImage 9, I hate you
Reinstalling windows when very tired and still had my 500gb external hard drive connected.
Managed to delete all partitions on the drive I was going to install to, and also the external drive with most of my data on it (also backed up to dvd, mostly).
Recovered 99% of the stuff I needed with a recovery program, but it was a very slow and stressful week, that.
Managed to delete all partitions on the drive I was going to install to, and also the external drive with most of my data on it (also backed up to dvd, mostly).
Recovered 99% of the stuff I needed with a recovery program, but it was a very slow and stressful week, that.
Soldato
- Joined
- 31 Oct 2005
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- 8,866
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- Leeds
biggest boob, reinstalling windows, choose your HD to install to / wipe, I stupidly wiped my USB HD, with movies games etc on, whilst leaving the damaged IDE XP install intact, DOH!
After reading the thread, there's a recurring theme here, remove all HD's !
After reading the thread, there's a recurring theme here, remove all HD's !
Soldato
- Joined
- 13 Oct 2004
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- 2,774
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- Teesside
just nearly spat my arny out reading that, ahaha
Back in 2000 my dad gave me another hard drive to put in our family PC as it had completely run out of space. Anyway I plugged it in and when it booted up the new hard drive had detected as the master...or so I thought. I went straight into dos on startup and typed 'format c:/s'.
Turns out it hadn't been detected as the master and I had just erased all my sisters GCSE coursework. Woops.
Turns out it hadn't been detected as the master and I had just erased all my sisters GCSE coursework. Woops.
Soldato
- Joined
- 24 Sep 2005
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- 20,191
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- Middlesbrough
The amount of times i've damaged hardware or lost software over the years is unreal.
That's just joys of teaching yourself computing, learn from your mistakes
That's just joys of teaching yourself computing, learn from your mistakes
Permabanned
- Joined
- 13 Nov 2006
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- 5,798
******* Windows 98. Get Bill Gates in here now !!!
I managed to get it back but it took me a few hours and it all had to be handed in the next morning and she hadn't finished it. Think my dad gave me the drive at 8pm and I was on there until 12ish sorting it out, so she had an all nighter to finish,
Soldato
- Joined
- 18 Oct 2002
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- 9,637
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- Xbox Live
THe list is long and full of ballsups
1) first PC went pop, was fairly sure it was the MOBO swapped it, nothing happened, fiddled with everything for a while couldn't figure out was wrong, only thing I hadn't touched was a little red switch at the back of the PSU. so I flicked it
1 PSU on fire and copper raised from the mobo. I didn't bother trying to determining if anything that was connected to the PSU at the time was worth salvaging
2) ME (actually this should be number 1)
3) In the 12 years I have had my own PC I don't think I have had a single year where I have not had to reformat at least once, however in later years I have had more PCs to balls up so I think statistically I'm getting better.
4) HDD died (not my fault, it just decided one day it wanted to play brick) all my downloads, music and recorded TV and family photos were on that disk. No way to recover without paying
luckily the photos were backed up on several other disks. Still I'm 500GB of media down which will soon need to be replaced.
5) I think my dad is at fault for this one. We were trying to create a home NAS and some how through the constant on/off/on/off/on/off the computer just died, we thought the power switch may have failed but on further inspection we think something on the MOBO died.
6) Another one with my dad. My younger brother had spent a whole week trying to fix his computer, the HDD had died, and he had bought another one, but for some reason whenever he reinstalled XP the PC would just die and would fail to boot.
So we had a look at it, and for ages we could not figure out why it would not even read the XP DVD let alone boot a disk. Turns out there were 2 DVDRoms and the one we put the disk in did not have its SATA cable connected
Next we installed XP on the new disk and we had issue after issue, sometimes it would install sometimes it would crash, so we decided to upgrade the BIOS, which seemed to work.
So we then installed XP and spent a while downloading the drivers off the internet on another PC and transferring them onto this PC so that the networking would work and we could run the MS auto update and get the latest SP release. After all this we rebooted the PC and it came up with "OS missing". Oh crap... So we started again and this time we rebooted before installing anything on top of the OS and it was fine. Then we did the networking drivers and SP3... And again "Missing OS" when we rebooted.
Turns out that the boot order in BIOS was CD USB Floppy HDD and we had the USB dongle still hanging in the back
7) Bricked a router when flashing it once.
1) first PC went pop, was fairly sure it was the MOBO swapped it, nothing happened, fiddled with everything for a while couldn't figure out was wrong, only thing I hadn't touched was a little red switch at the back of the PSU. so I flicked it
1 PSU on fire and copper raised from the mobo. I didn't bother trying to determining if anything that was connected to the PSU at the time was worth salvaging2) ME (actually this should be number 1)
3) In the 12 years I have had my own PC I don't think I have had a single year where I have not had to reformat at least once, however in later years I have had more PCs to balls up so I think statistically I'm getting better.
4) HDD died (not my fault, it just decided one day it wanted to play brick) all my downloads, music and recorded TV and family photos were on that disk. No way to recover without paying
luckily the photos were backed up on several other disks. Still I'm 500GB of media down which will soon need to be replaced.5) I think my dad is at fault for this one. We were trying to create a home NAS and some how through the constant on/off/on/off/on/off the computer just died, we thought the power switch may have failed but on further inspection we think something on the MOBO died.
6) Another one with my dad. My younger brother had spent a whole week trying to fix his computer, the HDD had died, and he had bought another one, but for some reason whenever he reinstalled XP the PC would just die and would fail to boot.
So we had a look at it, and for ages we could not figure out why it would not even read the XP DVD let alone boot a disk. Turns out there were 2 DVDRoms and the one we put the disk in did not have its SATA cable connected
Next we installed XP on the new disk and we had issue after issue, sometimes it would install sometimes it would crash, so we decided to upgrade the BIOS, which seemed to work.
So we then installed XP and spent a while downloading the drivers off the internet on another PC and transferring them onto this PC so that the networking would work and we could run the MS auto update and get the latest SP release. After all this we rebooted the PC and it came up with "OS missing". Oh crap... So we started again and this time we rebooted before installing anything on top of the OS and it was fine. Then we did the networking drivers and SP3... And again "Missing OS" when we rebooted.
Turns out that the boot order in BIOS was CD USB Floppy HDD and we had the USB dongle still hanging in the back
7) Bricked a router when flashing it once.
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brother asked what would happen if he stuck his finger into my CPU cooler ie would it stop the fan
it did. but only after breaking off 3 fins and taking a chunk out of his finger!!
then my athlon 1700+ cpu overheated and melted part of my motherboard.
it did. but only after breaking off 3 fins and taking a chunk out of his finger!!
then my athlon 1700+ cpu overheated and melted part of my motherboard.
Associate
- Joined
- 12 Mar 2008
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- 131
Ive had so many in my time with PC's. The latest would have to be replacing what i thought was a dead hard drive. In the morning i switched my pc on to find that it just wouldnt boot, i just sat looking at the blinking cursor thinking 'not another one!!' as i had only just replaced a hdd in another pc that month which presented the exact same problem. It was showing the usual symptoms of a dead drive.
So that day at work i ordered a new drive, it was pretty cheap so i wasnt too bothered. A couple of days later and joy of joys my new drive is here, i will be back up and running in no time. First off i took the old drive out and tested it just to be sure in an external enclosure and fired it up and it worked no problem. So now im really unsure as to what is happening here so i put it back into the pc it came out of and it booted straight away which was really odd as i tried many times to get it going before i ordered a new hdd.
I switched off the PC and turned it back on a few times as i was determined to make it fail and sure enough it stopped working again. Righto, i slapped in the new hdd and imaged it. Superb. But then the new drive wouldnt boot. I start checking the post screen and the mobo was having trouble seeing my drives and was taking a long time to recognise them. Great i thought, the mobo is on its way out now. I fiddled for ages trying to figure out what it could be until i eventually ripped out all the sata cables and replaced them. After a process of elimination i found it was a damn sata cable attached to the dvd drive that was faulty and was causing the PC to hang on boot up. I felt like a right numpty, i had spent hours messing round and getting frustrated.
But on the upside, i now have more storage
So that day at work i ordered a new drive, it was pretty cheap so i wasnt too bothered. A couple of days later and joy of joys my new drive is here, i will be back up and running in no time. First off i took the old drive out and tested it just to be sure in an external enclosure and fired it up and it worked no problem. So now im really unsure as to what is happening here so i put it back into the pc it came out of and it booted straight away which was really odd as i tried many times to get it going before i ordered a new hdd.
I switched off the PC and turned it back on a few times as i was determined to make it fail and sure enough it stopped working again. Righto, i slapped in the new hdd and imaged it. Superb. But then the new drive wouldnt boot. I start checking the post screen and the mobo was having trouble seeing my drives and was taking a long time to recognise them. Great i thought, the mobo is on its way out now. I fiddled for ages trying to figure out what it could be until i eventually ripped out all the sata cables and replaced them. After a process of elimination i found it was a damn sata cable attached to the dvd drive that was faulty and was causing the PC to hang on boot up. I felt like a right numpty, i had spent hours messing round and getting frustrated.
But on the upside, i now have more storage
Once plugged in a kettle lead into a machine without checking the switch on the PSU (I think it was from germany), and of course a large bang and sparks ensued, coupled with that horrible dead PSU stench that i've come to know so well when working as a technician.
Also once put two discs in a drive on top of each other by just not paying attention, was suprised when it couldn't read it properly. Had a pioneer DVD-RW (when they were new) set fire somehow to a cd in the drive and fill the room with toxic plastic smoke and make scorch marks on the inside of my case, though not really a gaff of my own. Should have seen the cd afterwards though, was burnt and warped/melted beyond recognition.
Also once put two discs in a drive on top of each other by just not paying attention, was suprised when it couldn't read it properly. Had a pioneer DVD-RW (when they were new) set fire somehow to a cd in the drive and fill the room with toxic plastic smoke and make scorch marks on the inside of my case, though not really a gaff of my own. Should have seen the cd afterwards though, was burnt and warped/melted beyond recognition.
Before I knew about backing up save files, I had a character on Diablo and I'd found a fantastic axe. "Wicked Axe" it was called. Nice yellow unique item, killed The Butcher in one shot
One day Dad uninstalled it to make some space. :'(
One day Dad uninstalled it to make some space. :'(
- Joined
- 3 May 2004
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- 17,733
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- Kapitalist Republik of Surrey
Autocad was installed back then so I guess that might have been it.
It was Acronis. Fore-warned is fore-skinned, I mean armed, I think the saying goes.