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Whew! That was close...
Posted: Fri Jul 13, 2007 8:35 pm
by smudge
Ok, let me start off: Has anyone - ANYONE - been able to get a blue screen of death on win xp!?!? In the 3 or 4 years of having it, my xp machine has *really* crashed once. And that was 5 minutes ago...
I'm just working and minding my own business when suddenly windows freezes. Ok, it's done that before, and usually I just have to wait through it, so I waited. A minute later, it comes up with a BSOD! As I'm reading the message (It's now different than the win98 bsods i'm used to), windows unexpectedly restarts itself and only recognizes the c drive - my windows OS drive. my other 3 drives (actually they're partitions, but same difference) can't be found.
Now I'm really panicking: about 50 gigs of data is gone! (

)and I don't have backups! I was just hoping to god the HDs didn't fail completely. Just in case, I rebooted windows, and viola! Everything is back to normal, not even a "This system has recovered from a serious problem" dialog!
Has something like this happened to anyone? Or is my computer just utterly screwed up? Have I mentioned how much I hate

windows

??
Posted: Fri Jul 13, 2007 8:42 pm
by Benjamin
You probably will want to make a backup of everything on that drive while it's still spinning. It could last another 10 minutes or another 10 years, but based on what you have said...
1. There is probably a hardware issue on that computer, most likely the hard drive is failing.
2. You don't have a backup copy.
Posted: Fri Jul 13, 2007 8:51 pm
by smudge
Well, it's been working perfectly ever since, like windows just hiccuped, but I will get on a backup ASAP. What is the best way to do it? Put everything as-is on another HDD, ghost it with norton, windows system restore, or what?
Posted: Fri Jul 13, 2007 9:03 pm
by Benjamin
It depends what your backing up. I tend to keep everything somewhat important on two drives and everything very important on 3 drives, one of which is in a separate location.
~begin physic reading~
Your going to back everything on that Western Digital drive up for the next month or so. Everything will seem to be ok, so your frequency of backups will decrease. Next June the drive will fail, and you will post on here asking how to get data that "you can't live without" off of a crashed hard drive
~end physic reading~
Posted: Sat Jul 14, 2007 1:26 am
by matthijs
Agree with Astions. I have an external HD on which I have a daily backup of all files on one partition and a clone of the system on another partition, which I make less frequently. I'm on the point of buying another HD and switch the external HD's each week or so and keep one in a physical different location as well.
The thing is, you do not realize the value of your data until it's lost. Really. Even a week worth's of work, email, photo's is worth so much. Can you imagine, having to go to your clients and asking them if they can sent their emails again because you lost them?
Posted: Sat Jul 14, 2007 1:58 pm
by s.dot
Make an image of your hard drive and burn it to some dvds or store it on an external hdd
Posted: Sat Jul 14, 2007 3:14 pm
by smudge
Thanks for the advice. I think that the main problem is not the HDs but rather the accumulated junk on it. As I'm typing this, I'm uninstalling programs I haven't used in a while and defragging. Does anyone know of a good system optimizer to clean up the registry, old programs, old files, fix various settings, etc?
Posted: Sat Jul 14, 2007 5:19 pm
by alex.barylski
Posted: Sat Jul 14, 2007 6:21 pm
by smudge
I know...

I just found that on some random website a couple years back, and it occurred to me how true it is.
Especially now

Posted: Sat Jul 14, 2007 7:37 pm
by Benjamin
smudge wrote:I think that the main problem is not the HDs but rather the accumulated junk on it.
If I was a betting man, I would bet you $50 that hard drive fails within six months. Consider this your second chance.
Posted: Sat Jul 14, 2007 8:55 pm
by smudge
Not to worry. I'm in the middle of backing it up right now.
Posted: Sat Jul 14, 2007 11:44 pm
by tecktalkcm0391
smudge wrote:Does anyone know of a good system optimizer to clean up the registry, old programs, old files, fix various settings, etc?
These two programs work great for me:
Eusing Free Registry Cleaner 1.5
Free Registry Defrag/Compact
Use them in order above for better optimization.
Posted: Sun Jul 15, 2007 4:42 am
by idevlin
I get a BSOD on my XP machine quite regularly. It's been happening for ages, and I've never got around to sorting it out, as annoying as it is. It says it's something to do with some driver or other and gives me a not equal error or something. I just can't be bothered to go through trying to find out which driver is causing the issue
Lazy I know!

Posted: Mon Jul 16, 2007 4:43 am
by ptrpan
idevlin wrote:I get a BSOD on my XP machine quite regularly. It's been happening for ages, and I've never got around to sorting it out, as annoying as it is. It says it's something to do with some driver or other and gives me a not equal error or something. I just can't be bothered to go through trying to find out which driver is causing the issue
Lazy I know!

I have the exact same problem. I get a BSoD about once every three months. Real annoying, but just to lazy to sort things out. But then again, it's probably time for a reformat of my HD. Haven't done a reformat in about 9months, wich is, I think, a bit sloppy of me.
But back on topic, as far as the backups go, I think having a backup (or two) on antoher HD in a different location is probably the best active measurement that you can take.
Posted: Mon Jul 16, 2007 11:12 am
by RobertGonzalez
My wife got one once. When windows rebooted, she got a corrupted HIVE file message. Once windows loaded, her old settings were gone. All of her applications were gone. She now had a new 'My Documents' folder but all of her old stuff was missing.
I was able to find her old files, but the apps to use them were gone so I had to reinstall all of them. Also, now she cannot print to the network because the printer software won't load because she needs the .NET framework installed, which won't install because she needs the MSI installer, which won't install because she needs the .NET framework. FSKING MICROSOFT!!?!?!?!?!?!?!
Anyhow, most of the computers in my house will be Linux by year end. Save for one Windows machine (mine) and hopefully one Mac (also mine).