Unsolved
This post is more than 5 years old
21 Posts
0
1357
January 25th, 2005 17:00
System Restored Killed My Computer.....please help me........................
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.
No Events found!
Denny Denham
2 Intern
•
18.8K Posts
0
January 25th, 2005 19:00
In your thread in the Dimension - General Hardware conference you indicated that you had begun to run the Dell diagnostics, but never reported on the results of that run. Did the diagnostics indicate a hard drive problem? You also indicated that the four diagnostic lights on the back of the system were lit--I assume they were all green, correct?
If not, you can see if a repair reinstall of XP (similar to the "dirty installs" you did with Windows 98) will allow you to at least boot to Windows so that you can back up your perishable data to removable media. The procedure for doing this is here. This will not disturb your data but will require you to reinstall any Windows Updates you have installed since receiving the computer.
Vellamint
21 Posts
0
January 25th, 2005 20:00
Vellamint
21 Posts
0
January 25th, 2005 20:00
Or should I just let me friend take my PC for a week and see if HE can get any data off of it by connecting my hard drive to another computer.
Can I mess my friend 's idea up by doing this? And exactly how much information do you think he might be able to save....I have
Pictures (most are backed up)
Very short videos (important to us)
Worksheets (important to me)
My Favorites (very important to me and darn that I didnt back THEM up)
Auction information saved in Ebay's Turbolister that probably took a week of my life to research and input. Can this whole program be saved or is it just impossible. If I can't get to this stuff I don't even know if it is worth it to try for the rest. UPDATE on Turbolister....I was able to import all my previous auction information to another computer....Yeah!
basically my whole My Documents file.........
I dont care about games, screensavers, and he said he will give me disks for Word and Excel....I do not like Word Perfect etc.
Maybe you think I am nuts but I really don't want to lose these.
Thanks.......
Message Edited by Vellamint on 01-25-2005 05:31 PM
Message Edited by Vellamint on 01-25-2005 05:57 PM
Denny Denham
2 Intern
•
18.8K Posts
0
January 25th, 2005 22:00
The error message you received is unexpected. It sounds like you may have not pressed "R" for the repair option but rather pressed at the Setup screen, which would have attempted to install another copy of XP. You should double-check this.
Having said that, a repair reinstall should not damage any data on your hard disk, but the emphasis is on the "should not." To be perfectly safe with the data you wish to preserve, the alternative of having a friend install your hard disk into another computer and copy the perishable data to CD is the most conservative approach. Since the hard disk passed the diagnostics tests there is no risk involved in this approach and all of the data should be accessible. After this is done, you have the option of doing a repair reinstallation when the drive is back in your computer or doing a clean reinstall.
Vellamint
21 Posts
0
January 25th, 2005 23:00
only have my hard drive is mine.....I must have created another partition or something.....27G are being used ....somewhere.....
I know all my information is in here somewhere.....can someone now help me find it!?
Oh, I could not do a system repair, I install (or thought I installed) right over the old system....it asked if I wanted to install over or create another partition but I chose install over....so what is going on.
Anyway......I want to back up pictures and videos but the programs....are here somewhere......can you tell me how to get to them. And my favorites......and Microsoft Word and Excel (no longer have the disks to reinstall)
Thanks.
Message Edited by Vellamint on 01-25-2005 08:53 PM