System Restore killed my computer......help please........

Question

My 8250 has had a couple of wierd problems in the past week.  Audio would not play through Windows Media but would play with Jukebox.  All of a sudden I could not acess my Yahoo mail account and the error message said that I was not accepting cookies and needed to enable them.   I did not change anything so after a few days of this I figured that some nasty website changed some settings and tried to do a system restore.  Got up....came back a couple of hours later and my computer is dead.  Here is what I have done so far.   Booted to every 'mode' I possibly can.....safe mode brings me to the screen that has all the numbers and drivers on it and stops dead.  I sometimes hear a faintish noise that sounds like a jet taking off.   Called Dell Support....for about 3 hours.   The guy had me do things (skndsk /r etc) that took so long he told me he would call me back. (Twice).  He was reading from a book.  He also had me power off, disconnect everything except monitor, keyboard and mouse....power up.   Power off, disconnect plug from wall and hold button in to release stored electricity.  He had me do something on startup with the 'F' buttons that supposedly restored something to factory settings.  Four lights in back are one....no light is illuminated in the front.  Nothing is helping.   He says the next step is to reformat and actually gave me 2 phones numbers of businesses that might be able to save my 'stuff'.  The first one I called said $1500 - are they kidding me?    I do not want to lose my stuff....I am not a business but a home user that (like all of us) has 'stuff' they do not want to lose....small video clips, photographs, my 'favorites' ( a ton of them), ebay's turbolister alone has so much time intensive information stored on it that the thought of losing it all is making me lose my mind.   The system is not even 2 years old and I purchased the extended warranty so I am good until 2/06.  Can anyone think of anything that will help me.  I would love to speak to an actual technician....I honestly dont even care about the fact that my warranty will cover a new harddrive if this one is unfixable.  I never in a million years thought that I needed to back-up all this stuff....like I said the system is not even 2 years old and I have never had a problem with it until this past week.   Help please.

DELL-Jesse L · Answer

Vellamint,   If you can get into Windows then, back up your information while you can in case the harddrive is about to go bad.  You will then need to contact Dell and have the drive replaced if it is defective.

Vellamint · Answer

Please......what any other suggestions......I just took out my wireless network card that I have had problems with ...... booted to F12......running some diagnostics now.......

ejn63 · Answer

At this point, your best bet is to:

Immediately disconnect the hard drive.

Purchase and install a new drive. Reinstall Windows. PATCH FULLY AND INSTALL ANTIVIRUS SOFTWARE, and UPDATE IT. Then reinstall your application software and fully patch it.

Finally, shut down, and install the existing drive as a slave. Copy your data to the new Windows drive as needed. Even though you cannot boot from it, you should be able to recover the data.

The more you fiddle with the existing drive, the greater the chances you will lose everything or have to resort to a data recovery outfit and pay $1,000+ just to have the drive looked at.

Once the restore is done, consider the lesson learned - NEVER, EVER rely on a single copy of your data on a single hard drive. YOU MUST HAVE BACKUP!

Vellamint · Answer

That's just it...I can't GET into windows.....

Vellamint · Answer

So my choices are:    Do as above - buy new harddrive - even though I have paid for extended warranty but might be able to save some data.....   or   keep dealing with Dell 'technicians', format the hard drive, lose everything, and if I still have the problem-have Dell replace hardware.   Somehow I thought that paying for extra years of warranty would give me the  right to speak to a computer literate experienced Dell technician that would do everything they could to save my hard drive......I am sure it is cheaper for them to have me just reformat and/or replace hard drive but that is not what I thought I was paying for.   sorry - this seems to have turned into a rant!

Vellamint · Answer

Okay....not to appear rude but 'Secondly, if you were running a program like Ghost or Acronis True Image it is possible that you could have restored an image and been back up and running in ten minutes or less.  You could also have cloned your hard drive to a second drive using a program like Casper XP.  Then it is as simple as switching SATA cables to the cloned drive or doing an actual drive swap.'.....since this is all greek to me it should be obvious to anyone reading this that I need help not criticism.....   I have had computers that have failed me in the past and there have been major warning signs that have enabled me to save some of the information that I did not want to lose......this time there was NOTHING......and no one seems to be able to inform me as to why, when system restore is supposed to HELP you, that it killed me.   I thought these forums were to help each other....I am a simply home user with moderate computer experience.....cloning hard drives and Acronis True image mean nothing to me.

rwinegar · Answer

Some lessons come at a very high cost. This appears to be one of them.

First of all the data that you are so afraid of loosing should have been backed up. There is no excuse for failing to do so.

Secondly, if you were running a program like Ghost or Acronis True Image it is possible that you could have restored an image and been back up and running in ten minutes or less. You could also have cloned your hard drive to a second drive using a program like Casper XP. Then it is as simple as switching SATA cables to the cloned drive or doing an actual drive swap.

Been there done all that several times. Hard drive failures are now only a minor inconvenience.

rwinegar · Answer

I am helping you.  I gave you the names of two good imaging programs and a cloning program that might prevent a similar situation from occuring in the future.  I doubt, however, that you will bother with them.  Other people here are trying to give you sound advice, but you ignore it.    Message Edited by rwinegar on 01-25-2005 11:46 AM

RoHe · Answer

Suggest you set BIOS to boot from CD instead of HD and boot from your Windows Reinstall CD. Then use XP's Recovery Console to reinstall (I'm assuming it's XP) 'on top' without having to reformat and lose everything. You might eventually have to reformat or replace the HD but you might at least get into Windows long enough to copy everything.

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=307654

Did you ever make a boot floppy using XP or your antiviral software (McAfee or Norton) that may let you boot to C: prompt? If Recovery Console doesn't fix the problem, a boot floppy might get you to where you can copy things off onto floppies or external USB drive.

Also strongly suggest you repost this query on XP forum where the real XP gurus can advise you. I know this is upsetting but be patient and people will do their best to help even though we don't get paid for our time/effort.

Ron

Message Edited by RoHe on 01-25-2005 10:56 AM

Vellamint · Answer

I have gotten to the C:/ prompt already and sure I can again...ran CHKDSK which said one or more errors were fixed but still cannot get Windows.  I have tried to reinstall but get to a part where I get a warning that an OS is already present and it sounded as if this would not reinstall 'over' the existing OS (which I used to do all the time on 98) but it sounded as if it would erase what was there or that it was not a good idea to it.   I will repost where you say and thanks all for your help...sorry if I sounded 'snippy' but one of you guys sounded as I knew that you were talking about with swapping this and imaging that.....I don't.

ejn63 · Answer

Do not try an install over - if the data is irreplaceable, BACK UP to another drive first. Every time you boot that system and fiddle with the drive, you lessen the chances of data recovery short of resorting to a professional.

A second hard drive costs under $100, or 1/10 or less than it will cost if you have to have professional data recovery done.

Message Edited by ejn63 on 01-25-2005 03:09 PM

Inman · Answer

I have to agree that the best step is to get another hard drive going and then try and recover data from the first one.

I have both of the important machines in my house with cloned hard drives (old data but all programs ready). I back up each machine routinely to the other through my network with a simple Xcopy command in a batch file. I also back them up to a spare drive in one of my kids machines. With this system each computer has a backup in 2 other locations. Despite this, I once got an early copy of one of the nasty viruses on my hard drive before Norton knew what it was. Coincidentally the backup hard drive in the other machine died - amazing coincidence. Fortunately my wife still backed up critical data to a floppy and I had a copy of the other data files only 2 weeks old on CD - my good fortune.

The moral of the story - you can't have enough backups.

If you can't figure out how to clone a drive or use the other machine AND this data is as important to you as it seems, you need to solicit the help of a computer savvy friend or pay a professional to come over and set you up.

1) Buy another hard drive (then if the first one is dead after Dell replaces it you can use the new one as your clone/backup).

2) Get it going WITH anti-virus

3) Recover your data

4) set up a cloning or backup process.

Good luck

twl845 · Answer

Valimint, From one partialy savvy computer user to another, you seem to know more than I do. The thing is your at your witts end right now and those 'tech' guys over in India will have you re-install your system as soon as they know they don't know how to help you. I don't know the extent of the software you will lose starting over, but there comes a time when you have to accept defeat. If they want to charge you $1500 to fix your computer privately, you would be better off getting a new computer for the same money and start from scratch. I don't remember if you said how old your computer is, but I wouldn't go out buying slave hard drives etc. not knowing what I'm doing. I'd only be getting in deeper and deeper, and I'd finally wind up giving the job to someone for a fee. Which reminds me that if I remember right, didn't Dell say that they would send someone out to your house if need be?

Vellamint · Answer

twl845

I agree....it is not worth it....but I will try my darndest to get my information back....

I have reinstalled a "dirty" install I might add....right over Windows XP.....I can find most of my files......I have succeeded in getting my videos on a DVD but my photos are only half there - or at least I can only find half right now. I am missing 20 some odd gigabytes on my hard drive so I think all my "stuff" is somewhere and right now I am just trying to get to it in order to back it up and do a "clean" reformat......any suggestions......also everyone else's "favorites" are there but mine get an error message "inaccessible" arghhhhhhh. any suggestions for that.

I really want to call Dell and scream at them for wanting to wipe my hard drive out without attempting the things that I actually did.....yes this is a lot of work reinstalling programs but I have managed to save some stuff including my Turbolister listings.....which take a lllloooooonnnnngggggg time to input. Why does that program work without reinstalling.....I found that program and make a shortcut to the desktop and it works....come on guys.....help me out here.....

Thanks.

And if my hard drive is failing I BETTER get a technician to come here and fix it....what the heck did I pay for an extended warranty for!???

RoHe · Answer

Glad to hear you got major chunk of stuff back after the XP Recovery! "Some" is way better than Dell's solution (=none). Avoid reinstalling or writing any new files, shortcuts etc to HD until you're sure there's nothing left to recover.

There are a couple of programs that may help you find things that have been deleted, even from recycle bin or with ctrl-delete. So you might want to download onto FLOPPY(!!) and see if they help find things.

I've used Restoration 2.5.14 which is free for download at
www.majorgeeks.com/download4474.html

Use "recovery by copy" and try to copy onto floppy or CD/DVD rather than to HD so you don't overwrite other files. After you recover every that can be recovered, maybe the Internet Explorer repair tool will find your favorites.

Good luck...
Ron

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System Restore killed my computer......help please........

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