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[StanBowles]

Sorry to always moan about computers but...
I got the message and a blue screen when I turn my PC on.
Any thoughts?
Nothing works...

[Stumpy Pepys]

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Do you have a recovery CD?

[Incandenza]

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Sorry Stan, have never heard of this problem. I love that phrase, though.

[StanBowles]

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Ah not worry.

I have a CD, whack it in...
Nothing.

Fuck this, I'm buying a Mac when I get paid. Then I can sit in Starbucks and type.

[Ek weet nie]

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That happened my Dell Laptop - it meant the hard drive was fucked. Luckily it was in warranty so they sent someone out with a new one. They got me to do a few diagnostic checks before they sent someone out - they thought it might be just looking at the wrong drive letter. It wasn't though. Hope you've backed up your hard drive recently, I didn't.

[StanBowles]

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Ah.
Fuck.
No, I didn't
I think that's the end of that then...

[Ek weet nie]

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Microsoft support page may help you.

As I say, in my case it was because the hard drive was fucked. I'm no expert but scanning that article and from what I googled when it happened to me this error message can be caused by other things too. Unfortunately, I don't know enough about it to help you further, sorry.

[Incandenza]

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Stories like this remind me that I need to back up more often. I never really do, though, except for our photos.

[erwin]

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Now I'm getting worried.

How exactly (in words a mollusc might understand) does one 'back up'?

[hobbes]

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Put it in reverse, and let the clutch out slowly.

[Cavalry Trouser Tips]

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http://www.carbonite.com

[Cavalry Trouser Tips]

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Or, you can do what I do and write your own cron job shell script that uses rsync to synchronise your stuff to a remote location (namely, my mate's NAS - he uses mine in reverse for the same thing).

[erwin]

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Thanks Mr Tips.

(Blimey! "Because your life is on your computer" and "43%"!!)

However, your second idea might as well be a mollusc squeaking for all I understand it ...

[Ubik]

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In my experience there are two types of people in the world, those that make backups and those that just wish they made backups. If the worst comes to the worst and the drive is toast, I found this very useful:

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

It'll pull a lot of stuff off damaged disks without having to pay through the nose for a data recovery specialist.

Hope that helps.

[Guest]

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Hi, is this disk on a machine that you can bootup still?

I'm guessing you can't because of the nature of the machine, but perhaps you have a way...

If you can access it (recovery disk, dual boot or move the physical disk to another machine being the most likely ways) and then get to a command prompt and run chkdsk /f on the affected drive.

I've had this happen before, something has become corrupt in the boot sector and the data is almost certainly fine, chkdsk is quite likely to resolve, though not certain.

[Guest]

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I thought this thread was going to be about this.

[Stumpy Pepys]

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To check if your hard disk is completely dead, download a Linux distribution -- Xubuntu would be a good choice (http://www.xubuntu.org/).

Download the iso file; you'll then need a program to create a disk image from this file to a CD-R. (Nero, which often comes with Windows, will do this. If not, go to filehippo.com and download DeepBurner for free.)

You can then boot from this CD without affecting your computer, assuming you have an optical drive. If you're lucky, you'll be able to explore your hard disk from the desktop and maybe recover something.

[Ginger Yellow]

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To echo what barndoorio said, try the recover disk again before anything else. It's possible the hard disk itself is OK but the boot sector or the FAT has become corrupted. It may not have booted because of your boot priorities in BIOS. When you get the very first loading screen upon turning on the computer, you have to press a key (often Del - it should say) to enter setup. From their make the CD drive the first boot device. Then insert the recovery disk, save and restart. If that doesn't work, you may well be screwed.

[G-Man]

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Fuck this, I'm buying a Mac when I get paid. Then I can sit in Starbucks and type.

You wouldn't if you saw how mine has been acting up lately.

[De Geas Clean Linen]

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If you have XP, just boot from the original XP CD.

Then press 'R' and you should get a DOS prompt. Type "chkdsk /p" (without quotations) and smack enter. Then type "fixboot" (without quotations) and hit enter again. Type "Y" (without quotations) and enter. Then type "exit" (without quotations) and your PC will now reboot.

If that doesn't work then just boot from the CD, hit "R" and when you get into DOS type "chkdsk /r" and then enter.

[Tactical Genius]

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Fartle's answer is the best here.

For it to blue screen then it is reading something off the hard disk.

If the hard disk was completely toast, its would fail at the end of the POST, that is the black screen and all the writing you see for the first 10 seconds or so when you first switch on the machine.

The blue screen is more likely a software than a hardware error and can be down to corrupt boot files.

Could also be that it cannot read the boot files because that part of the Hard disk is buggered hence why Fartle correctly asks you to fix the boot files.

I don't do desktop support, but i have fixed a few failed servers and i would use fartle's command.

[StanBowles]

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Thank you for all your suggestions.

I tried everything mentioned, and even took the PC into the local repairs shop... But unfortunately, it's buggered.

Apart from losing everything, I'm most frustrated with the loss of iTunes - does this mean I have to start my library again, from scratch?

[Stumpy Pepys]

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Copying music files from an iPod to a PC is reasonably straightforward, if I've understand your question correctly.

[Max Payne]

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Anapod Explorer is a useful bit of software. Google it up.

[StanBowles]

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That's really useful.
Does it affect my purchased items too?