Anyone help me - computer troubles

Status
Not open for further replies.
emp

emp

New member
Jun 29, 2006
7,465
211
0
My wife is away, I am looking forward to a long, relaxing computer weekend.

Of course, I have cancel my vacation and come to work on Friday.
The I get home and windows acts up.

OK, I wanted to reinstall it anyway... let's just save those pass... WHAT?

It crashed and took windows with it.

So here is the situation right now:

- Windows will quit booting with a bluescreen and "unmountable boot device"
- Ubuntu boots, but I cannot access them thar internets frigging network card
- I can not reisntall windows, blue screen again
- I can not access the windows partitions via Ubuntu. It says access System -->Administration --> Disks in the help, but that menu point (disks) is MISSING

So I am looking at getting a new HDD tomorrow and installing on that.
Any other idea?? I would sleep better if I knew I could save my data before.

FUCK!

::emp::
 


Its not a total loss. I told someone on here about this before. If you get a new HDD, you can pay about $20 and get an external HDD usb case, which you can place your old hdd in and plug it into your computer giving you an external hard drive. This comes in really handy, especially for tasks like this, because you can backup your files to this external hard drive whenever you please, so you won't have to worry if windows crashes again.
 
remove all the other ide devices in teh computer, other hdds cdroms and floppy drives. go into the bios setup, restore the defaults. Put the hdd as the boot order (make sure the hdd jumpers are set to master or master single, not cable select or master with slave). boot the computer. If it comes up with the same error, plug your cdrom back in and boot off the windows cd. Go to the repair console and type fixboot. Yes on the option. Type Exit and enter.

If that still doesn't work go to install windows, see if a repair option shows up (not the same as the repair console) if it does run that. If it doesn't remove any recovery partitions and make sure your main windows install is on mount volume 0(first one). If that doesn't work, do you have another computer you can borrow?

ps. could also try a chkdsk /r in the repair console, but pffft not sure if it'll work. couldn't hurt.
 
LOL... done most of that, (minus unplugging everything) seems as if the master boot record (do they still call it that?) is fuxored on the win partition.
The repair option does either
a) not recognize the drive at all
or
b) bluescreens on me

Crap.

I will try the unplugging option, see if that does it.

My plan (maybe you can tell me if that is feasible):
1. get another drive
2. Install win
2. Slave the old one, scrape the data off it

Should be fine.

Crap

::emp::
 
did you try the fixboot and the chkdsk /r?
if you didn't try that. If you did could get risky and attempt a fixmbr
 
Oh.. this is all SATA. nope, no other computer I can borrow that can do that.
(the laptop I am sitting on right now is so old, it starts to sob whenever I type SATA, or USB, or... yes, cry your heart out, you brass piece of shit, steampunk is sooo last year.)

::emp::

PS: Yes, I know the HDD is not a total loss, but I already have an external drive.
 
The repair option does not recognize the device. And / or bluescreens.
Trying the repair console now.

Argh
::emp::
 
OK, still running chkdsk, but I will still HAVE to replace the HDD.
It is giving off sounds that are no good.

So if I get it running, I'll transfer to the external right away.

My peeve about this is that my relaxing weekend is turning into this.

Oh well..

::emp::
 
It's this kind of thing that makes me absolutely hate computers. One error and they eat up and entire fucking weekend. What's better is when it's someone else's computer that goes, they refuse to buy any replacement parts (or indeed any decent parts in the first place) then insist that you spend your weekend fixing it for them. Fucking love it.

If I had my life again I would tell absolutely no-one that I worked with computers. "Can you fix my £50 printer?". No, I can't Mum. Now fuck off.
 
it sounds like your harddrive might be dead mate.
i would try booting up hirens boot cd and running some of the disk repair utils like spinrite and hdd regenerator
 
Booting now, still, I am just saving data and then trashing it.

Yeah, I know about the "repair my crap" stuff Two things that helped me:

a) Only friends and VERY close relatives. Everyone else gets to pay. Yes, maybe cheaper than in a store, but they have to pay. And .. who knew, they all go away when you even mention money.

b) I told a very good friend to shut up and get a new box because I am not repairing his piece of junk anymore - I will not even touch it. One week later, he has a new computer and is happy ever since.

Good thing I have the cash on hand to go and get me a new HDD. There have been times when that would not have been quite so easy.

::emp::
 
Nothing worse than the sound of a dying hard drive. I double save everything on DVD's and several external hard drives but it still hurts.

Yeah I learned along time ago never tell anyone that I know how to fix computers. People at the store around the corner think I am a bus driver because of this blue shirt I sometimes wear. I told my girl also to keep it a secret. She use to think I was selfish until she saw her cousin bugging me about fixing her computer for free.
 
Speak for yourself buddy.

Grab a 500GB Seagate FreeAgent USB2 drive and make it a fuckin habit. I toss everything on there when I go away as well and have that drive in a bolted-to-ground safe. If my shit were to get robbed or catch fire, I can recover in a week.
 
Check your ram before you buy a new HDD. Pull each stick out and put one in at a time and try booting, try different dimm slots also. I've seen where bad ram makes it look like a HDD failure.

Anyways if it is the drive and you still can't get data off of it when you get your new one, freeze it for 15 mins and throw it in and boot it up. :D
 
The drive is even working right now, but still has me worried.

Better safe than sorry, a new HDD it is.
to Scott... I got all my data backupped, no worries there.
I am just paranoid and want to go over the old HDD again to make sure I get all.

::emp::
 
Fuck! I just got the same error on my other PC. Went out for a smoke...come back in...blue screen and unmountable boot device fucking error.

Now that's weird...
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom