Computer DEAD - any advice appreciated - HEEEEELLLLPPP!!!

[andrewas]

win98 CD will say that if it cant see any partitions. And of course, it cant see any NTFS partitions. This tells us that your FAT partition got damaged. Possibly just a corrupt partition table, possibly your HDD is throwing bad sectors and will die soon. Keep an eye on it, run scandisk regularly and keep backups.

[realbinky]

Check the seating (after you backup) of the drive, if the screws are loose (no comments please) the drive may not be seated firmly. Also, HEAT! Were you using it for a long time? Was it warm in the room? Did the fan die? Laptops are also notorious for heat issues.

On the Harddrive, if you ever DO get the chance to re-install, go with only FAT32, even if 2 partitions. NTFS isn't any more stable or safe in that regard, it is actually slower and piggier (word?) as it has overhead on each and every file detailing rights for it's use. NTFS is really a multi-user security file system, virtually unneeded for personal use, even if you are on a network a little bit of the time.

Oh, and why not take up my offer of an XP cd from me? You might as well, it would be handy to have in any event. I'm not charging anything. Donate the cost of postage + $1 for the CD to Ziroc/IW.

[Bungleau]

And... uhhh... to state the obvious, I'd be making a boot disk tonight for that critter. Two, probably, just 'cause I'm a skeptical kind of guy.

Last time I got a "OS not found" message, the kindly repair folks reformatted the drive to correct it. Between that time and the next time it happened (just a month later), I had the foresight to buy something to back up my critical files with. Definitely paid for itself....

[Timber Loftis]

Further Problem:

When my wife tries to run Norton Disk Doctor it tells us:

The operating system or another process currently has exclusive access to this drive, or some of its files. Norton Disk Doctor cannot continue with a repair under these conditions.

I get the same message for D: and C: drives (partitioned). Is this a NDD bug??

[realbinky]

Nope, that is true, XP (like NT and 2000) does NOT allow direct access, which is required to do its job. It SHOULD ask if you want to schedule a scan for the next reboot, where NDD can do a scan before XP fully starts, up to you if you want to risk it, but I bet it would be OK, as it is running OK now.

[Timber Loftis]

Thanks realbinky, now I understand. It did the scan when I un-checked the "fix errors" option. Found no probs on the C: drive. I played on the computer last night - enjoying much butt-kicking in the JI dungeon. It made it through a trip into standby mode and then a restart. I've got it at work now, and intend to have it checked out.

This has been real weird. It's made me paranoid as hell. [img]graemlins/erm.gif[/img] If I knew what the problem was, it'd be different

Not to be an ass or anything...but you did make backups of you DATA once you got the thing working again? yes?

[Timber Loftis]

Happened again. No OS. [img]graemlins/1pissed.gif[/img] This time it's going to take a professional to resurrect it.

I'm convinced it's not the HDD, though.

realbinky, I'm going to take you up on your offer if'n you don't mind. Check you PMs.

Yes, MagiK, I backed up everything. Except the TAXES we just finished yesterday. Luckily we printed our returns first. But, if I have to wipe and reinstall the system, we will lose the return-with-all-worksheets that we would normally have for our own records.

*sigh* What a day.

Bummer, sounds most peculiar. But I don't work much with laptops so am not familiar with their quirks.

[Harkoliar]

hey good luck there TL.. hang in there. i dont know absoloutly nothing about laptops (compared to desktop) hardware.. and im also not familiar with the win2000/xp windows so i cant help you anyway... except for a few prayers here and there.. as long as everything is fine there and that you were able to backup, and printing out your taxes against not being able to access your computer at all anymore (knock on wood)