Help Me Obiwahn, You're My Only Hope!

[angearia]

So the Computer Death problem of my laptop seems pretty official, but it appears to be something with the OS which means I can hopefully fix it by reinstalling Windows. But I'm left with the dilemma of losing the data I hadn't backed up in the past few months. Yes, I fail. Yes, I know! But most of the stuff that I'd be sad about is already

Comments

[flake_sake]

Is a laptop or a desktop pc? Because if it's a desktop it's a piece of cake to get out the hard drive and connect it to annother computer to save your data, before you do the reinstalling.

If it's a laptop it's hard of course, but you could mayb try and let it do a recovery procedure or something. Do you know a computer scientist? They are usually handy in such situations.

[angearia]

It's a laptop. My roomie's guy is good with computers, but he didn't really offer the data recovery as a viable option for me. Which makes me guess he thinks it's unlikely or would take a godawfully long time.

[flake_sake]

Ah laptops, they're nice when they're behaving but when they aren't I always remember why I like computers that I can pry open from time to time.

Long distance diagnose is always shady, but what does it do exactly and what OS did you have running?

[angearia]

I have Windows XP Professional.

It started out just freezing where I had to forcibly shut it down. I downloaded new antivirus software, Norton, to scan it and it came back clean. Then Norton suggested I defrag it - not sure if that made it worse or not. But shortly after this, it crashed and now whenever it tries to boot up it shows a blue screen that says I need to uninstall anti-virus software, reverse defragmentation, or undo a backup utility (nearly word for word there).

[angearia]

Oh, wow! Thank you for the advice! *gives gold star, cookies and other lovelies*

[menomegirl]

This might be the dumb question but is there any way you could email the stuff you haven't saved to yourself?

[angearia]

No, I can't get Windows to open at all. It won't boot up, so I'm left working through BIOS.

But not a dumb question! That's actually how I salvaged my BuffyverseTop5 recs before my computer completely died on me. I only wish I'd thought to save everything else. :(

[menomegirl]

Damn! I so wish I had enough knowledge to help you. But I see others are doing so.

Hope you can save it but (((hugs)) just in case you can't-that sucks.

[bobthemole]

If it's the price you're worried about, you might call a repair place and get a quote. It could be cheaper than you expected.

[angearia]

I might do that just in case I can't work my own magic. But rent is due in a few days so... We'll see! :)

[gabrielleabelle]

I'm a fan of just saying "Fuck it all" and doing a clean install.

But that's just what I'd do. Not necessarily the smartest action in the world. :)