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dead pc?
thamesmatt
Posts: 98 Forumite
in Techie Stuff
Argh! I have a problem and I think it might be a big one.
My trusty old medion PC which worked fine on Sunday suddenly declared windows hadnt shut down properly and I was prompted with the safe mode start last good version etc...
I chose to just start anyway as I know it seemed to shut down fine.
No luck it sent me back to the above choices so I chose the last known good settings,
No luck back to that screen again so I chose safe mode.
It then just kept declaring there had been a disk error press CRTL ALT DELETE to continue, I did several times and it just returned me to there.
My questions....
1. is it dead? if so how can I rescue my music and more importantly photos. I last backed up about 2 months ago before my hols so there are 100s of precious pictures on there!
2. if its not dead what do I do? My most pressing problem is my photos and if I could log in safely for just 2 mins I could save them all!
3. possible problem is that my disks that came with the PC seem to have corrupted and a friend did a cheeky fix to get me going again the last time I had a problem so I am effectivly system diskless!
Its 4 years old now and has served me well so if its dead its dead! the monitor and speakers are fine so they can go on to live another day but i need those photos or I will be more upset than the woman in the BT ad who is married to the bloke out of My Family
I hope you can help!!
matt
My trusty old medion PC which worked fine on Sunday suddenly declared windows hadnt shut down properly and I was prompted with the safe mode start last good version etc...
I chose to just start anyway as I know it seemed to shut down fine.
No luck it sent me back to the above choices so I chose the last known good settings,
No luck back to that screen again so I chose safe mode.
It then just kept declaring there had been a disk error press CRTL ALT DELETE to continue, I did several times and it just returned me to there.
My questions....
1. is it dead? if so how can I rescue my music and more importantly photos. I last backed up about 2 months ago before my hols so there are 100s of precious pictures on there!
2. if its not dead what do I do? My most pressing problem is my photos and if I could log in safely for just 2 mins I could save them all!
3. possible problem is that my disks that came with the PC seem to have corrupted and a friend did a cheeky fix to get me going again the last time I had a problem so I am effectivly system diskless!
Its 4 years old now and has served me well so if its dead its dead! the monitor and speakers are fine so they can go on to live another day but i need those photos or I will be more upset than the woman in the BT ad who is married to the bloke out of My Family
I hope you can help!!
matt
0
Comments
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Don't know how you can get out of the mess from what you've said.
My best recommendation is to buy a new harddisk, install a new os on it (borrow a cd of a mate and use your own licence).
Once up and running connect the old hd (if it's a ide hd, set it to slave), and see if your pc reconnises any data - if you very lucky and is does then copy your files to the new harddisk and start getting into a backup routine0 -
Can you even boot in to safe mode?0
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no, cant get into safe mode.
however got into the setup thing with the screen like an old bbc b and the the hard disk appears to still be listed.
someone told me if I could do that and see the drive then it might not be totally dead. they said if it wasnt listed then it was dead - end of story!
not sure how accurate that is as i am no expert on what goes on inside the pc.
on the other point I havent got a clue how to buy and fit a new hard drive and the only person I know who would is in france for a fortnight!
can I somehow acquire a boot disk from somewhere? I am on my old ancient laptop now so have the ability to download to a memory stick0 -
My laptop does this from time to time if left unused. Turn it off and keep trying until it goes into safe mode then do a restart.
Sometimes takes a few goes and is frustrating. First job when back in is to set a restore point and do a backup.
If you've got the operating system disc you may have to run a repair from that.
If you fire the PC up on a Win98 boot disc and you have XP installed it won't recognise the disc (NT file system isn't the same as FAT).0 -
ok from what u have said, sounds like ur hard drive is not being reconised in DOS propper.
can u take a pic of ur PC screen for me, or write down the EXACT error code. a pic will probs be best. 9.9/10 ur data can be recoverd. very very very rare ur pc fails, and u cant get ur data back. just have to have the know how.0 -
managed to get my operating system disk to work
gone into windows xp repair and its just given me a dos prompt
c:\>
I have no instructions or anything or how to run anything
tried to remember what I did with my old BBC B typed run or something but it sjust says command not recognised0 -
the error message is exactly as follows
A disk read error occured
Press Ctrl+Alt +Del to continue
messing about with operating disk, have tried to recover start up and system files. Only other option I have is a full reformat to factory settings which is a big no no!
I hope someone can help with this as i'm getting worried and running out of options now0 -
Good old run eh. Had to be worth a try.
0 -
Sorry, that probably wasn't much help.
Maye ry a proper techie forum. Or I'm sure there'll be some more help arriving soon..0 -
chkdsk c: /FEver get the feeling you are wasting your time? :rolleyes:0
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