Posted on 03/02/2008 3:52:23 PM PST by Chickensoup
Help!
Came home last night. Turned on the trusty computer and up came a long message, white on black saying: We apologize for the inconvience but Windows did not start successflly... with several option to start.
None of them work.
It then loops to the windows xp screen
Then to an ad for the mainboard
then to a scan devices screen
then to some sort of listing
This morning there was a listing that on each line named had a number of the programs I run at the end of each line. It has not come up this time.
The hard disk comes on for the main board screen and the listing screen
Macs are magic. Everyone knows that. Peace, love, nirvana, Chai Latte, and the Mac.
He was from NY, what can I say... :)
Yea, not normal, raises some serious red flags with me.
I have ignition folks. I will post next from the computer. I am in windows.
You are the brightest most wonderful people. Thank you. I I could post pitures I would post a picture of a beautiful sunrise,
Thank you
Thank you
You don't know if your completely out of the woods yet.
Woot! Woot!
Will do. I am posting from the poor baby now. My children were secretly cheering. Their language arts programs and some math programs as well as my work are all on this computer. I use AVG virus protection and Zone alarm
Sometimes you can get them on sale for a $100 or so for a 200 to 500 GB unit.
It definitely saved our butts in the office.
Everything breaks, eventually.
I think I am going to do that. I cant take this excitement. especially since my last back up was in 2006
Please tell us you have a hardware firewall as well.
By your description, it sounds like you got hit by some kind of worm or virus. Do you have Virus software running on the machine?
I've been following this operation with a bowl of popcorn. Very glad to see you were able to get back into Winders.
Now, here's a very good suggestion:
Go to this link. Download the ISO file of a utility called "PING" and simply burn it to a CD. It will boot your PC into a Linux variant and will allow you to make an image of your whole hard drive. Use this in combination with a decent size (160Gb +) USB external hard drive.
With the new USB drive plugged in and turned on at boot up you can send the drive image there and if your hard drive tanks, you'll have an image to restore back to a new hard drive.
The USB drive is also very handy for backups of docs and the kid's schoolwork. Ya just GOTTA have backups.
GOOD!
First thing- Back up any critical data to a thumb, CD, ext Hard drive, whatever.
Second thing- My Computer=> RClick system drive (usually C:)=> Properties =>Tools Tab.
In the error-Checking section: Poke "Check now". A dialog box will come up, check both boxes therein, press OK. Yet another dialog, Win being all crybaby because it can't do it without a restart... Yes you want to schedule at the next restart.
Restart the machine. This is the same thing you did from the boot disk, but will be more thorough. When the machine reboots, it will boot to a DOS-like interface to checkdisk and run automatically. Again, pay attention to restarts and any errors it is fixing.
Please tell us you have a hardware firewall as well.
What is that? I thought that those products were all I needed.
Yes AVG recommended by the techs here at FR and zone alarm
This sounds like a good idea. I am going to have time to find one of those external things tomorrow. I will ping you to talk about it
(We do because we run through our cable modem to a router with built in firewall and then through another switch/hub. We often have 4 computers on-line at the same time.)
A router to go between your cable or DSL modem and the PC. It will have a built in NAT firewall. Very handy thing to have from a security standpoint. ZoneAlarm and a NAT firewall are a great One-Two punch.
Back up any critical data to a thumb, CD, ext Hard drive, whatever.
I dont have anything like that. so I probably should just leave the computer on? I was going to do a virus check first.
That's not true. The recovery disk boots the machine in command mode so that the diagnostics can be run.
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