OT - anyone any good with computers?

[SS]

Sweetheart I tried emailing you but it bounced back!

[sweetheart]

Thats probably because none of my e mails are working. I have them all sent to my computer and my hotmail is probably full of stuff now.

To everyone who replied with kind suggestions and things I could do:-

Anyway, I managed to get my files back - not because I know what I am doing but because I happened on them by accident pressing buttons and seeing what was there. ( my documents file was empty but when I did a search and just put in one letter, they all appeared, so I copied them to a pen drive ( went and fetched one from Tesco).

After that I did the same with my music and pictures and they appeared too.

My documents and other files are still showing as empty though. I haven't got all my e mails but I think that must be because I don't know where the computer has put them.

I was about to put that vista sweep thing across the computer and it asked me to press something else and it fixed itself on the operating system. It re installed its drivers ( it said) , whether it went to the internet and got these itself or whether it took them from somewhere in the computer I don't know. Half my " control panel " was missing but now it is all back.

Don't ask me how, So whilst it isn't perfect, its up and running and I have put in back up disks now. I hope they worked because I cant trust the computer to actually be doing what it says it s doing.

My anti virus re appeared and it seems it has found and vaulted two viruses , which I suspect were the problem. I have probably lost some stuff but it doesn't matter, I got most of it.

Thank you all for all the help and advice. I have backed up my files

[tony sayer]

In article , sweetheart scribeth thus

Best think to do is dump that pile of Vista cack and install Windows 7 which is much better in fact Microsoft finally got it right with that one;!...

[dennis]

Go to

the iso image and burn it to a CD. Boot the infected machine from the cd and run the scanner.

It may or may not fix it well enough to recover the data.

Its a linux boot disk with windows repair tools on it, including a scanner that windows virii will find hard to hide from as no windows code runs during the scan. Make sure you download a new image as its updated frequently.

[dennis]

There is no reason why it should. You have to run something for it to do anything. The AV software on the machine should catch it if you did accidently run something.

[dennis]

Media centre is a part of vista and will be reinstalled when you use the vista disk to reinstall windows (if needed). OEM disks are not once only, you can install them on the same machine as often as you like. You can only install them on the one machine (officially).

You still need to copy your mail and music files before you reinstall.

[dennis]

You had better make sure your ISP actually keeps proper backups of the mail before you advise using IMAP. Some ISPs do not do proper backups of the mail server.

[dennis]

Gmail using POP.. local backup and it stays on gmails server. Oh and there is my automatic backup of outlook to my NAS drive and a couple of usb sticks, and to my MCE machine.

[dennis]

That's where mine is.. it keeps the tools dry and the frost out of the paint as a by-product.

[Andy Burns]

Such as if the virus had dropped an autorun.inf file onto the root of the system volume ... or infected a few .doc files with macros, which someone then opens to check if they're the ones they want to recover?

You assume the virus protection on the second machine is better than the original machine ...

[dennis]

Neither vista nor win7 will run them unless you tell them.

AV software will find them.

Its unlikely to be worse.

[tim....]

There wasn't (still isn't[1]) anything wrong with XP, gawd knows why they "updated" it.

tim

[1] assuming that you can live without a "touch" screen!

[Huge]

Money.

[John Rumm]

I have a suspicion that I know (at least part of) what has gone wrong here. I would guess that vista has encountered a problem restoring your user profile on startup, and tried to be helpful by archiving it and creating you a nice new fresh one with none of your files in it.

If you look in your C:\Users folder, you should normally see one folder per user. So if there was a user called John, then there would be a folder with the same name. I would guess on yours there is a duplicate folder with a .1 or .old or similar in the name. One will be your real folder with all your files. The other will be the new one.

You should be able to drag file from this to you new profile. )or f you want to fiddle about you can swap them back again, but you will need to enable the *real* vista admin account to do it.

[Man at B&Q]

Rubbish. Both my XP machines (one Thinkpad, one packard bell) had utilities to create recovery discs.

MBQ

[John Williamson]

I think you'll find that the utility is provided by the computer maker, not Micro$oft, and is tied to that maker's systems. I'd not put it past say, Dell, to make it a paid for download or, possibly, downloaded as part of the PC warranty registration process.

[Dave Liquorice]

recovery

No MBQ is just being pedantic about the "and below". The context of this thread is Vista, versions of *Vista* below and including Home Premium do not come with a utility to make recovery discs from the recovery partition on the HD. Earlier versions of windows might have usch a utility.

[Man at B&Q]

NOt intentionally. I accept it's the computer maker that provides the recovery disc.

MBQ

[Andy Champ]

Seconded.

I liked The original NT. 3.51 was an improvement, 2000 wasn't. XP was OK (running it here), Vista wasn't (on my main machine at work). Windows 7 seems pretty good (on my laptop). Windows 8 preview is around...

Andy

[Andy Burns]

If the O/P has an old PC, it's hardly likely to have a newer O/S on it. If they have a friend, it's more likely to be XP than Win7.