Raven Temporarily Off-Line - PC Issues

montego · Posted: Sat Feb 17, 2007 10:47 pm

Raven has asked me to let folks know that he has lost his PC today and is feverishly working to get back on-line as quickly as possible. He just asked folks to be patient while he works to get himself back on-line.

Thanks!

Doulos · Posted: Sat Feb 17, 2007 11:33 pm

Bumber.

wiz · Client Joined: Oct 09, 2006 Posts: 394 Location: UK

nothing like a crisis at rush hour eh.

Thanks Montego for the heads up

FireATST · Posted: Sun Feb 18, 2007 12:25 pm

May it go smoothly and peacefully for him.... Smile

CodyG · Posted: Sun Feb 18, 2007 1:15 pm

Silly machines. Hopefully everything is going smoothly.

Raven · Posted: Mon Feb 19, 2007 2:55 am

Let me just say a few words about Microsoft. Well, on second thought I better not. It would surely damage my testimony Mad

Very long story short:

- Microsoft Upgrade Hell
- All I wanted to do was to go from XP Home to XP Professional
- 40+ hours later it is about as completed as it will get - only to 10 install attempts and about 15 recovery console excursions that all failed miserably. Just as a personal note, if you are depending on "Restore Points" to help get you back to your last good configuration, I have some property in Florida I'd really like to sell you Smile

!
- I now have to reinstall, 100%, all my applications

Do not ask me any questions about incompatibilities with any Microsoft products (Internet Explorer for example). I will not support it. I've had it with Microsoft.

I still have to reinstall Thunderbird and get my email transferred back, assuming I can retrieve the backup. Only 8 years of email that is so far lost, or at least in limbo. I had to purchase some DVD recovery software and am praying for the best. I'll know more when I wake up from a well needed and deserved rest, imo.

Good Night/Day depending on your time zone!

wiz · Client Joined: Oct 09, 2006 Posts: 394 Location: UK

Yay he is back!!

gotta love Microsoft, when it breaks (notice i said when and not if) it sure knows how to do a good job of it.
I had a similar situation not long back, where a simple defrag, deleted a vital windows driver. Many hours of trying to copy that file via DOS didnt work and i too, lost everything.

Hoorah for Mr Gates. :clap:

evaders99 · Posted: Mon Feb 19, 2007 2:44 pm

Wow, didn't even go to Vista.. just from XP Home to Pro?

Why did you need Pro anyway? The security permissions? Remote desktop?

40 hrs.. wow. I always tend to start with a clean wipe / reinstall anyway. But hey, I can say this all in hind-sight... I've had my share of nights formatting-reinstalling Windows. Then all the software. Restore points tend to be flaky, I wouldn't rely on them at all.

montego · Posted: Mon Feb 19, 2007 5:52 pm

What a mess...

Dawg · Posted: Mon Feb 19, 2007 5:58 pm

Raven,
I lost a BUNCH of email one time myself. I bought some niffty software that recovered every bit of it.

If you need the details....drop me a line and I will crank it up for you.

Dawg

hitwalker · Sells PC To Pay For Divorce Joined: Posts: 5661

man i cant believe this....
am i that special with my perfectly running no crashing ms xp pro ?
but i know how it feels......i lost a drive 2 years ago with a lot of stuff on it...

raven im sure you are aware of the firefox and thunderbird backup facility....?
i do that every month....

and 8 years of email ?
you keep all that ?
thats real scary.... Laughing

wiz · Client Joined: Oct 09, 2006 Posts: 394 Location: UK

I noticed that too, not for me to judge. but...8 years worth!!!

Raven · Posted: Tue Feb 20, 2007 9:33 pm

Make it almost 60 hours. I had backups of my critical files - email ands banking being the most critical. Several things went wrong at the same time or close enough to one another to make this the worst system disaster since I first started with PC's in 1979.

First off, my 2 month old IOMEGA 500 gig external hard drive crashes. OK, so I don't have a full backup but as a safety measure I had done an 8 gig backup of the critical stuff to a data DVD so I figured I was still okay. But, the recording software or a glitch in the night or whatever, never properly closed/finalized the dvd. So, I bought some dvd recovery software and it did/does a great job. I still lost my email but all my financial records were recovered; or so it appeared. When I tried to load the file into Money, it must have munged somehow because it won't accept my password and there seems to be no way to recover the password. Microsux won't help because they don't know if I am who I say I am. So, I spent a good while this afternoon downloading "password" recovery tools. Not one of them, regardless of the price, is/was able to recover it.

Frustrating for sure. It's there - I just can't get to it. Dawg, the file recovery software that you are probably referring to probably won't help but I am willing to try anything at this point. I have reloaded and attempted to recover some 12 to 15 times or more before I finally gave up, as I had to get back online.

Evaders: Why? Because I never learn. Mainly I wanted XP to see all of my expensive ram (4 gigs). XP Home only sees 3 gig maximum and not only that. But, XP Professional takes advantage of it all. There was another reason why I felt it was worth it but I forget. The point is, I did everything I was supposed to and as in Apollo 13, I had a quadruple failure, which isn't supposed to ever happen.

I need all of you to send an email to me so that I can get your addresses back into my address folder.

Thanks.

evaders99 · Posted: Wed Feb 21, 2007 1:12 am

Hmm I've never seen that as difference between Home and Pro. Really the solution is between XP 32-bit and XP 64-bit. Windows 32-bit can only address 4 GB of memory space... and even that is restricted to 3 GB of application data. It reserves 1 GB for itself.

Have a source that shows it can use all 4 GB in XP Pro? Or did you get it to work?

When 4 GB and more become standard, I will certainly move to a 64-bit chip and Vista 64-bit. Until then, I think its safe to stay in Windows XP.. my laptop is only an Intel Core Duo and not the 64-bit Core 2 Duo.

Dawg · Posted: Wed Feb 21, 2007 5:54 am

Raven,
This is for your E-mail. It is called R-Mail. It worked like a champ!

Only registered users can see links on this board!
Get registered or login to the forums!

If you would like to "tryit" before you buy it let me know.

Dawg

wiz · Client Joined: Oct 09, 2006 Posts: 394 Location: UK

email sent

Raven · Posted: Wed Feb 21, 2007 7:20 pm

evaders99 wrote:

Hmm I've never seen that as difference between Home and Pro. Really the solution is between XP 32-bit and XP 64-bit. Windows 32-bit can only address 4 GB of memory space... and even that is restricted to 3 GB of application data. It reserves 1 GB for itself.

Have a source that shows it can use all 4 GB in XP Pro? Or did you get it to work?

When 4 GB and more become standard, I will certainly move to a 64-bit chip and Vista 64-bit. Until then, I think its safe to stay in Windows XP.. my laptop is only an Intel Core Duo and not the 64-bit Core 2 Duo.

Microsoft is the source. They tell it all.

Raven · Posted: Wed Feb 21, 2007 7:23 pm

Dawg wrote:

Raven,
This is for your E-mail. It is called R-Mail. It worked like a champ!

Only registered users can see links on this board!
Get registered or login to the forums!

If you would like to "tryit" before you buy it let me know.

Dawg

Thank you for the offer but I use Thunderbird. But the client is not the issue. The file is on a DVD that never closed/finalized itself. I have tools to read the dvd track by track but without the closure bits/markers, nothing will actually transfer the ISO image. I also have software that recovered most of the dvd but the Money file has a corrupted password. So, here again, I have the data but can't access it.

FireATST · Posted: Wed Feb 21, 2007 7:28 pm

That just stinks..... Sad

Guardian2003 · Posted: Wed Feb 21, 2007 7:41 pm

Stab in the dark here but if its possible to make a copy of the DVD it might be possible that because it wasn't finalized the recording software might see it as a multiple write affair and writing something else to it *might* finalize it.
Obviously you cant test this if you only have the one 'good' DVD Sad

I don't eny you, what a blinking nightmare!!

wiz · Client Joined: Oct 09, 2006 Posts: 394 Location: UK

dvd-rw's are the future

Raven · Posted: Wed Feb 21, 2007 7:53 pm

Guardian2003 wrote:

Stab in the dark here but if its possible to make a copy of the DVD it might be possible that because it wasn't finalized the recording software might see it as a multiple write affair and writing something else to it *might* finalize it.
Obviously you cant test this if you only have the one 'good' DVD Sad

I don't eny you, what a blinking nightmare!!

Impossible. And Wiz, it is/was a dual layered DVD+R R/W.

wiz · Client Joined: Oct 09, 2006 Posts: 394 Location: UK

bugger yeh i saw that after i re-read the size of file..

blu-ray is the future Dance-Y

Raven · Posted: Wed Feb 21, 2007 8:03 pm

Wiz,

Are you sending me that software?

wiz · Client Joined: Oct 09, 2006 Posts: 394 Location: UK

see your inbox...dont really want to post publically