OT: Computer Problem

[Stephen Howard]

If and when you get things sorted I'd thoroughly recommend investing in a decent disk imaging program. Paragon and Acronis both produce decent utilities - and earlier versions are often given away free on computer magazine cover disks. These programs allow you to save an 'image' of your hard drive or partitions which can then be re-written to the hard drive in the event of a disaster ( such as a failed service pack installation! ). They also often come with a utility that allows you to make a bootable CD which will allow you to access your saved images in the event of the OS being unbootable.

I'd also recommend partitioning the disk to create a separate partition in which to store any backup images - and again, some of these imaging programs contain tools that can repartition your hard drive without destroying any data.

Sounds like a lot of hassle until you consider that had you had all this in place you could have restored your OS in about as much time as it takes to make a decent cuppa and a bacon butty.

Keeping up-to-date backups is the cutting edge of DIY...

Regards,

[Colin Wilson]

The purpose of recommending ubuntu for this is that it will allow him to recover data, without risk of piddling around with the filesystem in an attempt to "fix" it - and perhaps losing it forever.

[Roger]

The message from Colin Wilson contains these words:

Yes, I noticed that when I followed the link.

I will endeavour to download it when my Dell is restored although I note they do require a fast broadband connection. Mine rarely gets up to one meg and has been as low as 0.2.

Watch out for another cry for help when my ubuntu install goes pearshaped. :-)

[Roger]

The message from Colin Wilson contains these words:

Many thanks Colin

e-mail on its way in the same upload as this. Let me know if it doesn't arrive as I wouldn't exclude the possibility that I could have failed to unscramble your e-mail address correctly.

[Roger]

The message from John Rumm contains these words:

I somehow managed to order my Dell with just a reader. (Doh). I recently decided to do something about it and bought a DVD/CD reader/writer to replace it but (perhaps predictably) couldn't persuade it to work which is when I sought the long distance support (he lives in Gloucestershire) from my friend who supplied the SP 3 disc. Meanwhile the DVD drive has been successfully installed on this computer replacing the one that would only write CDs even though it was supposed to do both.

What? And forgo the chance of making more money out of customers misfortunes as well as saving pence on each sale. :-)

I have been working on the assumption that the less I meddle with things I don't understand the less is likely to go wrong.

[Roger]

The message from Stephen Howard contains these words:

Thanks again.

You will see from other posts that I am taking up Colins kind offer rather than your own as it should be a shoe-in from an almost identical machine. I will look into the imaging program when I have the current problem sorted.

I have a Seagate 'Free Agent' external drive but that has proved rather less versatile than I expected.

I an not sure I could face the prospect of cocking up a partitioning and losing all the data I am currently trying to recover.

Yes, but the downside is I could have ruined everything trying to get to that position.

I am much happier with things I can clout with a big hammer and my idea of cutting edge DIY is an angle grinder. :-)

Anyway thanks again to you and all the others who have given comfort in my hour of need but particularly to you, Colin and Andrew who offered to provide discs to get me out of my predicament.

[LSR]

If you have a Seagate or Maxtor drive there's a free *current* version of the excellent Acronis TrueImage at

(It's called DiskWizard but is branded and restricted to their drives)

[Stephen Howard]

You can use the Windows UBCD/Bart disks to recover the data - the OP will be able to fire up Explorer...where everything will be where he's used to it being. Once that's done it really doesn't matter much what he does with the filesystem....it certainly can't get any worse.

Regards,

[Colin Wilson]

alt.os.linux.ubuntu have no complaints per se as of yet...

[Colin Wilson]

Hopefully the stuff I sent earlier will have enough to get you going anyway :-}

1) Dell Dimension 5150 install CD 2) Autopatcher (up to Aug 07) 3) Ubuntu 8.04 4) my own compilation CD "Bits & Bobs" - loads of handy utils on it

You don't actually "install" ubuntu to recover data, you just let it boot up from the disc - although without checking, it offers the boot / install option from the same front end option, which might be confusing initially, it doesn't just install immediately, you have to select the icon once it's booted, but YOU DONT WANT TO DO THAT BIT ! :-}

[Colin Wilson]

LOL nice tagline, but to be fair, they've got decent support - you can still download the drivers from their site years after you bought it, and they're generally very well put together machines.

You'll also notice it's damn near impossible to build a machine to the same spec for less - I always used to build my own, but not now - they're essentially off-the-shelf commodity items now.

[Stephen Howard]

Both excellent ideas!

Unless you've got huge piles of data you might be better off with a couple of usb memory sticks. Now that they're available in 8Gb+ sizes I'm moving away from secondary hard drives as a backup medium.

Get the data off first! I tend to feel that after a significant collapse of the OS you're just as well doing a fresh install...clean slate, and all that.

You'd be surprised. I've been using these on-the-fly partitioning utilities for years with no problems. They're pretty robust these days.

That sometimes works on a Dell. I recently 'fixed' a C640 with an unknown password by using a pair of pliers to short out the eeprom ( where the bois settings are stored ).

You're most welcome, hope you get it sorted!

Regards,

[Stephen Howard]

That would be ideal...and the OP could certainly use it on the external Seagate drive...but I bet the laptop's internal drive isn't a Seagate ( probably a Fujitsu ). I've no idea if the program would work with other brands as long as there was a Seagate in the chain.

Regards,

[Roger]

The message from Colin Wilson contains these words:

I think I am still a bit confused as to what to do so will post again when the discs arrive.

[Clint Sharp]

In message , Roger writes

You're only an hour away... where's your gumption!

[Roger]

The message from Colin Wilson contains these words:

In those areas yes but telephone support is not so hot.

Since I may well need another computer shortly I can but hope there are other retailers out there who can provide a suitable product at an affordable price.

I started to fall out of love with Dell after my brother-in-law bought one on my advice. (Talk about the blind leading the very blind). He couldn't get anywhere on dial-up so had to resort to telephone sales and a very aggressive salesman who wouldn't accept that my BinL had a specification (prepared by me) that he wanted to adhere to. Kept him on the phone for absolutely ages and somehow managed to up the order by a significant amount.

When it can to connecting the computer up I then had an interminable argument with technical support over something I didn't understand and the bod on the other end couldn't explain properly.

But the last straw was yesterday. Thinking I should at least see what Dell had to say I phoned the technical support number and was met with blank incomprehension at almost every turn. It even took 3 attempts to spell out my e-mail address. Despite trying to make it clear that I had done all the tests and what I needed was some way of rebooting the machine while the o/s was u/s I was led down the F8 route and requested to run some diagnostics again. Eventually after some 10 to 15 minutes what I wanted sank in and I was told the I needed to speak to software support who needed me to pay for the privilege of being baffled for a further session so I rang off.

[Stuart Noble]

There are those that would say, if you're going to install a mate's pre-release version of SP3, you deserve all you get. What's wrong with the Windows update site? A simple strategy that I recommend to beginners is to keep my documents on a usb stick and restore the machine to factory settings if anything goes wrong. Colonic irrigation.

[dennis]

"Colin Wilson" wrote in message news: [e-mail]...

That's because you have kill filed them! ;-)

[Roger]

The message from Stuart Noble contains these words:

You may have a point. It didn't even cross my mind that there might have been something dodgy about the SP3 disc.

[geoff]

Having had a USB stick die on me once, I would never go down that route without a second backup

I now make my co. database backups to two USB sticks AND hard drive