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30053
June 28th, 2011 07:00
Computer Broken After System Restore
I bought an Alienware M17x last year around the end of July. To be honest I've been less than pleased with it, especially for the price tag of $3500. When I first got the laptop, it wouldn't even start up correctly. The very first time I started it up I got a blue screen error and for about a day I couldn't log in. Over the months I've had issues with the display driver and overall computer performance, but most of the problems have either gone away for some reason (literally, just gone away) or have only bothered me on occasion - enough for me to look past after the first few days of consistent errors.
A few days ago I started having problems on the internet. At first I believed it was my ISP, but it turns out everyone else on my home network wasn't having any problems at all. I tried using the troubleshooting option available from the wireless network icon in the start menu several, several times and once or twice it uncovered an error. I can't remember what the error in its entirety was, but it was something like 'your computer appears to be properly configured, but there is a problem with the device or resource [DNS]'. On occassion, DNS would be replaced with microsoft.com. My connection to the internet was very shaky and I couldn't do much of anything. It was able to resolve the problem only once and the next day the problem was back. I figured the problem was with the actual adapter in my computer. Since it had only been a few days, I decided to restore my computer to a previous setting from June 21 of this year.
The system restore went through and appeared to be working fine... until it tried to restart the system. I never even got to the Aliensense login. It appears to start up windows, then all I get is a black screen with a cursor (no lights on or anything) and a Runtime error related to Microsoft Visual C++. I've tried restarting normally and in all safe modes and it always ends up the same way.
It's imperative that I get my computer fixed as soon as possible, my business depends on it. If anyone can provide any help at all it would be greatly appreciated. If you need any more details, I'll try to provide them. I'm running Windows 7 64-bit.
EDIT: I have gotten lights lately, but still the same issue with the screen and cursor. No login either.
Phil_Rock
14 Posts
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June 29th, 2011 19:00
What I'm trying to tell you is that I can't log in because Microsoft Visual C++ exhibits a runtime error. I can't log in at all, running safe mode or normally. It will always fail before then. Whether I run safe mode from the prompt, from the F8 options or whatever else it isn't going to work.
I'm going to have my cousin backup all my data before I do anything else, though. I hadn't planned on a system restore breaking the computer, seeing as that's not supposed to happen, and didn't bother to back up anything.
I guess more than anything I need to figure out how to repair Visual C++.
7Leagueboot
2 Intern
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501 Posts
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June 30th, 2011 03:00
Whoops, slight error in my last post...
I said that if Windows gets seriously corrupted even Rollback could fail. On reflection I don't think it can because twice in the last 8 years I have been in that situation and in both cases Rollback simply announced that the MBR was corrupted and that it was going to repair it. This process took a few minutes but eventually it started up again and recovered the system. This can be very useful if the machine has been infected by a rootkit.
7Leagueboot
2 Intern
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501 Posts
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June 30th, 2011 03:00
From everything Phil has said I guess he can boot from a CD, in which case I would put the Windows CD in the drive and select the option to repair Windows.
Phil, system restore does a reasonably good job until Windows gets corrupted. Once that happens it has no use. This is why it's so important to constantly backup everything to an external drive or online server. The easiest and least expensive is an external drive. I believe the most popular backup software used by members of this forum is Acronis True Image. Personally, I use Rollback Rx because it is fully automated and far superior to system restore. I find it indispensable however, let's be clear, even Rollback Rx could fail if Windows becomes seriously corrupted and that's why I also backup all my data to an external drive as it is created. That said, unlike system restore, Rollback Rx has always recovered from Windows corruption.
Another excellent point about Rollback Rx is that if you do a complete fresh reinstall of Windows, all drivers, and your security suite, then install Rollback Rx, it keeps a permanent copy of the base installation so that should you ever need to do a complete reinstall again all you do is tell Rollback to revert to its baseline and within 3 to 5 minutes your system has been renewed leaving you to reinstall your programs and add back all your backed-up data.
The only reason I'm harping on about Rollback Rx is that I keep seeing posts from people who have lost all their data or need to reinstall Windows, all of which could have been avoided if they had Rollback Rx installed.
For those of you that don't know this product, you may be wondering what makes it so superior to system restore?
Apart from the fact that system restore cannot revert you to a clean uncorrupted reinstall of Windows with only drivers and security suite added, in its advanced settings it allows you to specify folders and files that may never be reverted. In my case that would be all my mails, contacts, sales, and web sites. Whenever you restore to a previous image it will take a snapshot of the current image and then restore the current data to the restored image so you lose NOTHING! And if that isn't already good enough, you can also mount any image as a virtual drive and copy data from the virtual drive to your local drive/s.
I have mine set to take a new snapshot at first boot every day but you can also set it to take one hourly, at each restart, or on a specified day/time. It doesn't matter if files are open when it runs either.
Finally, one major difference between Rollback Rx and system restore is that it can be accessed prior to Windows even attempting to boot. Consider that Phil could get to system restore from the subsystem if he could run the F8 command but he can't! With Rollback he wouldn't need to because it runs immediately after the BIOS has loaded allowing you to recover outside of Windows.
Phil_Rock
14 Posts
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July 1st, 2011 17:00
My cousin tells me its a problem with the display driver. He's working to get it fixed.