downloaded itself some updates, when I went to hibernate it the "updates to do" flag appeared next the "Switch OFF" icon, so I did & left it to it.
Came back later switched on and after BIOS checks etc it starts with the black windows XP "loading"/progess bar screen - after a few secs machine reboots..... and does it again.... & again...
Found XP boot CD, changed boot order so machine boots from CD.
Recovery console asks for Admin password - but won't accept it ?!! (it is (was?) correct)....
Any options please?
I am going to buy a new base unit but I want my files back at least!
It's probably BSODing. Try and video the process. If there's a brief splash of blue, try and pause the playback at that point and read the error message. If you haven't got a video cam, even on your mobile, which should be perfectly adequate, then you can try and take a still of it, but it requires a lot of patience, because most modern digital cameras don't respond immediately to the shutter release, and therefore you have to try and anticipate the appearance of the BSOD.
Well, I can only think that you are giving the password of a user account that you use every day, rather than the admin password used to set it up?
Well, there's no point in buying a new base unit if it's an OS problem. But if you do, you should be able to access the files by connecting the disk to another computer. An admin on the other computer can reset the permissions and so view the files.
Obvious first things to try are F8 on startup for the early boot menu, and then try safe mode. If it boots into that, do a full chkdsk with error fix and restart, see if that is ok.
If not, then try the "last known good" boot option.
If you have a system restore option available, try that as well.
You may be able to d a repair install from the recovery CD a (although try and avoid if you can). If you have access to another machine, then download and but a BartPE CD, so that you can boot into an environment and see / edit the file system.
Seems a bit excessive. However, recovering the files should be easy if the disk is ok.
Hit F8 while it's booting up and you can either go to "last known good configuration " or "start in safe mode"
If that doesn't work, when you build the new machine, put the HD into it as a second HD. you'll prolly get the bootloader asking which version you want to boot from, I presuming you will be using win7 , so choose that.
You should still be able to see the files on the old HD
Assuming f8 works here, go back and stop it from doing the update. Go to windows update manually and look at the list of updates. If you have, in the past had any trial versions of Office or other Microsoft products on there and removed them, the stupid XP updater installs updates for the removed package, and often this completely screws up the machine as the new files attempt to run code which is not there any more with very interesting results at times. I have been told that one can modify this by removing a folder in Windows, but what I've done is told it not to automatically install and go through them in detail and only allow the ones for basic windows to install, and hide the others. Windows update moans each time that I hid important updates, but that is just tough it should not be so stupid in the first place... grin.
mmm wish I;d seen that last night as I tried that and all seems OK until it decided it couldn;t copy/install files from D:/i386, even though they were there in the "choose location" dialogue box that it proffered...
Every time it starts up now it resumes "setup" and we end up there a again now....
However whilst in Setup I can Shft F10 and get a command prompt and move around the file system which looks intact - course Idon;t have any 3.5" floppies anymore yet, and I have no 3.5" drive on the lappy or anything else,, and the photos etc that would be nice would see me here til doomsday ttittlng about with discs.
Looked into getting the DVD burner going from command line but seems is nogo? Can I get usb going from command line?? Because (naturally) I bought LAST WEEK FFS!! a 1TB USB external drive - bought to back everything up......
will that get USB going too? anyway I can just copy stuff off in bulk?
wellll this mc is at least 11 years old and has been nursed along for years running old or "lite" version of everything, but it really is past it. This last experience from the house of GRRates has finally sealed it for me - all I gotta do now is rescue what I can and dump the bstad.
It depends what you want to do ... the basic surf/email/media wouldn't be that difficult for a fairly confident non-techie. If you can set up your mail server settings in windows, then you'd have no problem under Linux.
As I suggested above, keep OS and data separate (Ideally on separate discs). That way you can install as many flavours of Linux as you like for evaluation (bearing in mind most of them are available as a LiveCD).
I used to use Ubuntu, but I feel they've lost their way - they have made dramatic changes to the desktop (breaking several apps) and started acting like google/apple regarding your privacy.
Linux Mint gets good press - it's a derivative of Ubuntu intended for the media centric user.
For me (as an IT professional) the biggest learning curve is how you view the system. Take the desktop, for example. With windows you just have "windows". Under Linux, the underlying windowing framework is (or tends to be - there are others) X11. Then you can run various flavours of desktop environments on that. Ubuntu used to use GNOME2 and switched to Unity (hence breaking some of my apps :( ). You can still retrofit GNOME2, or try GNOME3. However, if you kan stand every app starting with a "k", there's KDE. Or XFCE. Or LXDE. You get the idea.
Also, I'm afraid you might forget how to reboot a machine under Linux. Because of the way the kernel is implemented, updates, installs and patches can be applied on the fly. The most dramatic example I can give is when I was first messing with Ubuntu, I managed to bork my soundcard. After hours of trying to recompile drivers, I called a work colleague at home. He was able to connect to a command prompt (a bit part of being a Linux expert) and investigate, while I was idly surfing the net at the same time. A few minutes later, the sound just came on - he'd recompiled and reloaded the sound driver. No reboot, or logoff/logon required !
I've now switched to Debian (Wheezy) running xfce, and am very happy with it. I use the machine as a media server, so it really just downloads and acts as a file server.
At the end of the day you have nothing to lose except an hour or two, and possibly a blank CD (although if you can boot from USB, not even that).
ok not promising then... repair install looking like the way forward. However I would try a chkdsk from an alternative boot source as well.
If you can get that, can you access your install CD at that point? If so, have you tried copying the contents to a directory on the hard drive, so that when it barfs on reading the CD during install, you can select the hard drive copy?
(chances are it will barf on the copy activity however since it sounds like your disc or the drive is not well)
Its non trivial... doing something from a live CD of some sort (or perhaps better - live USB drive if your BIOS has the capability to boot from USB)
(I have a GParted install on a USB flash drive that is good for booting knackered systems and accessing the files - that will let you offload stuff to a external hard drive as well)
Like fixing cars, you very rapidly get to the situation where you need a working one to be able to get the bits for the broken one. Do you have access to a laptop or another PC?
Can't remember for sure, however if it does not, then any number of other "live" CDs etc will do the trick.
In which case, buy the new one, and slap the drive from the current one on it as a temporary measure to get your files. Chances are the old drive might be IDE, and a new one may not have an IDE connector (all SATA is common these days).
Get hold of something like:
formatting link
That will let you power up pretty much any drive and attach it via USB to the new machine.
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