catastrophic 'puter failure

[Maven]

I haven't been on this and other sites, the CBA Forum, for ex., because my 10 yr. old 'puter gave up the ghost, but not its hard drive (at least I hope not). I'm writing this on a borrowed machine, but hope to be back in the next week or so. What's so frustrating is that I uploaded and edited ~80 pix from our recent trip to Greece and would like to retrieve them as well as other photos I have there.

Jeff in NZ: If you'd be so kind as to spread the word that I'm alive and well, but not online as much as I would like, I'd appreciated it.

Thanks,

Paul

[OBIII]

Most failures are power supplies. Ask around for an old one, don't spend over 30.00 as you can get them for less than that online.

OB

[SSGOldfart]

Most failures are power supplies. Ask around for an old one, don't spend over 30.00 as you can get them for less than that online.

OB
problem is he can't get on line:redneck:

[Lee]

Geez, ya think? Maybe he is using a borrowed 'puter to get on-line? O-tay, Buckwheat!

P.S. Maven, last 3 came thru my house were power supplies. Make sure you got a 20 pin vs 24 pin connector and SATA plugs if you need them. If you have no help from friends, PM me and I'll assist ..... Lee

P.P.S. No lights? Most likely the power supply. Lights, beeps, and some screen activity? Uh Oh. Might be something else ..... Even the little coin cell battery gives out will prevent a boot, but wou will see screen messages.... Just sayin.....

[Ed Barrett]

Hope you don't have that IRS hard drive problem.

[a.squibload]

Don't throw it out YET, you can recover files from a bad HDD by freezing it,
I've done it on 3 different drives over the years.

Can get a pretty good 'puter from Wally World for a couple or 3 hundred bucks,
shop around. Or buy parts from Newegg or similar and assemble, save some $.

Also Linux OS is free, I'm liking Ubuntu, does ALMOST everything I need.
Can download it to a CD for installation on another computer.

[CGT80]

Don't throw it out YET, you can recover files from a bad HDD by freezing it,
I've done it on 3 different drives over the years.


You could try that, as some people have said that it has worked for them. The safest bet is to plug the hard drive into another computer. If the drive is eide or sata you can try that first on a different computer. The next common solution is to use a SATA or eide to USB adapter. For some reason, people find that the adapter works when a direct connection to the mother board didn't. I wasn't willing to risk any damage to my hard drive by freezing it (condensation can supposedly be an issue), but I did try the other two methods I listed and I had a computer programmer friend try it. We both also tried to read the drive with linux. It was a no go.

I had a lot on my drive and hadn't backed up in far too long. I found a company called data savers llc in atlanta georgia. I had found other companies that give a quote after they get your drive and the reviews were not promising. I found a forum for hard drive recovery pros and found the owner of data savers on the forum. He had a few thousand posts and sounded like he knew his stuff and he cared about getting the job done, even if it was challenging, while taking care of the customer. They have flat rates for data recovery. My hard drive did not need physical work so it ran $350 for the recovery and I was lucky enough to get all of the data. I am in no way associated with data savers, but they were well worth the money. If you don't have any luck with other methods and the data is worth the price, then check them out. They will check our your drive without charging you as well. If the hard drive is bad or going bad, you want to be careful not to do anything that may make it worse.

In the past, my problems were usually windows OS related and a clean install would fix the problem. I had backed up data before, but got lazy about it. I now have win 8.1 set to automatically back up to an external drive. I also made dvd backups of my data. I tried ubuntu/linux but didn't like it. I think win 8.1 is a decent OS but the interface is lacking. I downloaded classic shell and now I have a real start button and I killed off the charms bar and all the other touchscreen and pop up **** that it had.

Good luck with your recovery. Hopefully it is just a software issue and someone can get you back up and going.

[bangerjim]

Good luck on this one!

In my many years of computers, I have unfortunately found that many times when a power supply goes south, it takes many of the other sections of the mother board and peripheral cards with it. Modem, HDD board, display, RAM, etc can all be fried with the PS going haywire. They are supposed to crowbar back, but many times that takes other stuff out when that circuitry in the PS looses it's way!

I have replaces at least 4 different PS's, only to find the motherboards and other stuff were fried also. Hope you do not! The drives themselves were not fried thanks to the on-board protection most drives have (heads auto-parked).

bangerjim

[shaper]

The computer in my shop took a dump last week. I took it to the local repair shop. They said the mother board was bad. I don't know what to think. They started the sales pitch for a new computer before they even looked at mine. The only good that came from this is I put all of the 4000+ pictures on a memory stick a week before this happened. A good number of those pictures are of our grand daughter that is now in heaven. She died at the age of 11 years.

[MaryB]

Power supply in my astronomical observatory croaked last night, I was in the middle of an imaging run when poof no power.

[bangerjim]

Three words for everybody.............BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP!

I do a tertiary backup of all my irreplaceable data and files at least twice a week. Or more!!!!!!!! That is my business in there!


Too bad Lois Learner did not listen!!!!!!


banger

[CGT80]

The computer in my shop took a dump last week. I took it to the local repair shop. They said the mother board was bad. I don't know what to think. They started the sales pitch for a new computer before they even looked at mine. The only good that came from this is I put all of the 4000+ pictures on a memory stick a week before this happened. A good number of those pictures are of our grand daughter that is now in heaven. She died at the age of 11 years.

I would not trust a memory stick. My usb flash drive did have a backup I made, but in my research I learned how it is common for memory cards to fail. The name of the game is multiple backups.

I bought an m disc compatible dvd burner for $27 bucks from newegg. The discs are $3 each and are supposed to be archival quality. Standard dvd's seem to be susceptible to breaking down in a matter of years in some cases. DVD's are cheap enough to make two backups. I also have a external usb hard drive for a backup, and then I work with data from my computer which has an SSD. I might even use an older WD hard drive as an extra backup since it was in an old tivo that I just quit using. It is a 500 gig drive and isn't good for much else. Sometimes the backups fail as well. You can tell that my bad drive a few months ago, really woke me up.

[opos]

This is going to sound nuts...maybe it is nuts but it worked...I got a new computer and loaded everything to the new one and set the old one aside for a couple of weeks. I realized I'd missed a couple of picture files so went to plug the old one back in to grab those files and the green light on the back of the p/c just blinked on and off and the computer on off switch didn't turn the computer on...now what? I told a buddy about it and he said to try something..he said to take a hair dryer..plug in the computer (with all the accessories plugged in)...when the green light begins to flash on and off...direct the heat from the hair dryer into the fan on the back (power supply fan) for about a minute and see if the light comes on solid green..if so...try the start button...well I thought it was an April fools day joke but what the heck...it did it and it worked...got all the files...Seems that sometimes on an older p/c the insulation and solder joints get hardened and dirty and they won't work till warm...all the hair dryer does is mimic the machine being on for a while...there are a lot of "verifications" of this on the web...type in flashing green light on p/c and I'll bet you will find some...I'm far from computer smart and was about to have someone get the files off my old drive but this did work fine and the cost was free....Can't hurt if you have the flashing light.

[Shuz]

Hang in there ,Paul!

[imashooter2]

Best move I ever made was a network drive on my router. No more begging the wife and daughter to back up their laptops. Terabytes are cheap these days.

[Maven]

opos' suggestion to use a hair dryer worked, at least for awhile. The 'puter started right up, but is dead as a doornail right now.Not a major problem as I've got a new one coming this PM .and will transfer the hard drive contents to the new machine on Thurs. The hair dryer trick is really worth trying if you experience this problem.

[bangerjim]

I guess tea leaves, chicken soup, and a rag doll with pins stuck in it works also!

My solution has always been go out and just buy a new computer. That works EVERY time. They are dirt cheap today.

banger

[Freightman]

I had a old 14 year old computer, when they decided not to support XP which was the highest operating system the bios would run I went to Office max bought a AMD based computer with a teribite HD for $228. Not worth my time worrying with a old out of date computer.

[Lee]

Well if you stick a hot - *** hairdryer in the power supply dump hole then you already know where the problem is.
Less than #35 assumming you really don't know how to search the I'net.
Power supply first. Period.

PS takes out the rest of the hardware? Meh.