This place can't close down, what's going on??? Is anyone still here??? *bursts into tears*

My stupid, little brother who is NOT allowed on my computer just went on it while I was at class and tried to download a bunch of stuff, and Kazaa - even though I've told him 3 million times he's not allowed to download anything because my computer is old and can't handle nuthin! And now it won't start and is asking me for a boot up disk. Which I don't have, but apparently I can buy one or make it (this I know because he then used my credit card to call Microsoft Arrrghhhhhhhh)

All my poetry files for the last 10 years are on there, are they gone? Please tell me there is hope that they will be okay, because I didn't finish printing them all out, and I think I will throw myself off a cliff if I lose my poetry *cries some more*

Does anyone have a box of kleenex, or has that been packed up and moved to the new place? :'(

And now it won't start and is asking me for a boot up disk

I don't know if it will help but you can get a boot disk from http://dos.li5.org/#disks. Give that a try and get abck to us with the results and more info like what OS (Win95, Win98,etc.).

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Thank You Thank You Thank You for replying!!! Okay, I'm going to see if anything works, and be back when I'm finished.. hopefully it doesn't take me a million years.

Thanks Sonny another one for my DOS and Bootdisks bookmarks,

Jim

Well, Sonny answered your question, but let me calm your fears about the shutdown. PC911 will continue to operate sans forum. We're going to migrate the forum user data to www.PCQandA.com and run the forum from there. We hope to go live with it by tomorrow night.

Of course, with domain name propagation, some people might not be able to access it via the PCQandA domain name for 24-72 hours. I'll be posting updates on http://www.jasons-toolbox.com/PCQandA/ and will try to give a direct IP address link to help everyone get to the site until the domain name finishes propagating.

Thanks I have bookmarked that link!!

Okay so I made a boot start-up disk.. so how do I get into the computer? It's starts it and then says to type HELP for help, but I don't know how to get into the actual computer from here? Please help? Thanks!!

Oh and it's Windows 98 I use on my old comp.

After the "A:" Can I type GIVE ME BACK MY POETRYYYYYYYYY!!!! Will it help?

remove diskette, and then reboot.

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Thank You for your help sonny!!

I did that and it says "not reading drive F. Abort, Retry, Fail?

Did I do something wrong?

What is drive F supposed to be or do you have a drive F?

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I didn't know I had a drive F? I just, um, have Once CD Rom.. and I have two drives I keep my stuff on.. C & D. And I thought Drive E was the floppy? Or wait.. maybe E is when I put in a CD.. and then F would be where the disk is?

Sonny you are the best, do you think there is a chance my files might still be there?

p.s . I apologize for my computer illiteracy.

I'm sure they are still there. I think you may have gotten some Spyware from Kazaa or possibly a virus. If we can get into Windows, you may be able to get things cleaned up without trying something else right now. Try rebooting again with your floppy and select the "Without CD Support" option and repeat the instructions above.

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Are you at the DOS prompt when you type the sys c: command that Sonny gave you?

Ranger Bob -- AKA Bobby

I looked up domain name propagation on Google, but was curious why it would take several days to access the URL.

Does anyone have a little extra time to explain it? I'm just curious and can re-ask later when the new forum is settled.

Dave

Dave

Dell 8300 Dimension
Pentium 4
W XP Home


www.woodenpropeller.com

It isn't working I just found out my brother used my credit card to call microsoft support, so now that I've paid them to have them tell my brother to get a boot disk, I'm calling back to get them to work more for their dollar. Only he's put me on hold to go and talk to some of his colleagues... oh okay he says that the hard drive seems inaccessible based on the error messages.. and that I have a slim chance of recovering the data. He didn't want to run a scandisk because he said there was a 50% chance it would fix it, but if not it may damage it further :'( He says I should take it in to a technician and have them try to recover the data... :'( :'( :'( He said I may only recover a third of the data, at most. This sucks.. and it's expensive. So now what do I do? Any suggestions?

Basically, each ISP maintains their own DNS servers. These servers translate domain names into the proper IP Addresses. Domain names might be easy for you to remember, but they don't really tell your browser where the site is unless the browser can look up the proper IP Address from the user's ISP's DNS server.

Since domain/IP Address changes are constantly being made to websites across the globe, ISPs will refresh their lists every so often. However, first the DNS source they're getting it from has to be updated, and that DNS's source has to be updated, etc. Thus, depending on when your ISP refreshes and when the chain of DNS servers above them is refreshed, it can take 3 days for the domain name update to take effect Net-wide.

Jason, thanks for the explanation. Interesting.

Dave

Dave

Dell 8300 Dimension
Pentium 4
W XP Home


www.woodenpropeller.com

Have you tried booting to safe mode?

If by chance you aren't able to get back into windows........Do you know exactly on what drive and folder your poetry files are stored? As long as you know where they can be found, if they are on your C: drive you can get them copied to your D: drive, in DOS. If they're already on your D: drive they should be safe should you need to install windows again.

When you boot with your floppy disk, at the A:. prompt, when you type C: will it change to the C: drive? If it will, type so it looks like

C:\>dir

to see if you can view the contents of the drive. If you can then that means you have access to your drive and can operate in DOS to copy and save from one drive to the other.

Drive A: would be your floppy. When you boot with the win98 startup disk it creates a temporary virtual drive in memory to load utilities. ( barring any partitions) C: would be your main drive, D: would be your secondary harddrive, E: would be the ram drive. F: should be your cd drive. Putting a cd in and trying to access it again with the "dir" command you will know for sure. It's good that you have two harddrives. Can make things easier.

my poetry files I know I have on Drive D.. It's partition I am pretty sure between C & D. The safe mode is not working actually.. if I try that again.. safe mode doesn't cause any damage right? It's totally safe? Sorry, he got me all paranoid with his doom-talking..

kataria,

Is it possible for you to remove your drive and put it in another PC as a slave. If so, I can E-mail you a program that runs under Windows and is meant for data recovery.

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umm.. umm.. umm..

That is fantastic.. but I've never done something like that, and I don't think I can? My new comp has two bays but they are both occupied, one w/ a rom and one with a burner. But maybe I can ask around?

Also, if I can just SEE my poetry files, I would copy them down.. Should I try safe mode? I think there was the option to hit F5 to go into safe mode.. and he never tried the "dir" command..

safe mode didn't work.. it brought me to the A prompt. I did the C: dir thing and I got the same error message.. which is sector not found reading drive C (sorta like that). And I thought of entering D: and it brought me to the D prompt, then I entered "Dir".. and it didn't give me that message.. it brought up a list of things.. I can SEE on the list my folder.. but there seems an awful lot of free space, is it still there??????????

I think you guys are more helpful than Microsoft

I swear if we recover my poems I will make a donation to your fine establishment Perhaps even write a commemorative poem

what directory were your poems under...as in d:\windows\programs\poetry\etc etc.. if you can navigate to them you may be able to copy them to a disk and transfer them to your pc.

PC911Racing The Gazette BBT Dubbers ExMadCows

Vitalt

Useful Team Info

Using the boot disk, you may be able to copy your poetry from C: to a new folder on your D: drive. Download and put on a floppy Ztree from http://www.ztree.com and see if you can locate any of your files on your C: drive. The program is put on a separate diskette and used after you use you boot disk.

Support PCQandA

Actually I don't have anything on the C partition, all my poetry and files are on the D partition?

Great! Reinstall Windows and you should be fine.

Support PCQandA

But is it still the same drive? Just a different partition? won't it all erase? Also I no longer have the windows cd.. although I know someone who might have it.

I am very scared to do that. Can I look at the files in this mode? Or is it not possible to see them? I would like to copy by hand my poems if I can, and then try to reinstall windows? is that possible?

thanks!

Sonny, why don't you just have her reload windows again over the existing windows. She can rename WIN.COM to something else and load in a new copy of 98.
Especially since the files are on D: they wouldn't be effected. The boot disk will enable her to execute setup from the CD.

I used to do this every once in a while when I had trouble with windows.....

If your important files are all on D: drive they should be just fine even though windows is not. If you can not get windows up, and decide to do a re-install or fresh install or recovery cd ( you never said what kind of pc you have) along with an install of the program used to create your poetry files you'll get access to them again. Good luck

So... is it not a hardware problem then? b/c microsoft tech guy said it was the hardware and that I needed to install a new hard drive.

To find out if it is in fact your harddrive failing you can go to the drive manufacturers website to download their diagnostic utility to test and verify failure.

If you don't know the physical layout of your pc or what partitions are there than the only way we could figure would be for you to view your partitioning setup in fdisk to see if the drive has any extended or logical partitions. In fdisk by viewing partition information (option 4 I think) it will tell if there are one or more physical drives and /or extended/logical partitions. Taking care it's safe if no changes are made and just Esc out.

Things sound complicated when you don't know, but there not. If it's software related there is a way out. If it's hardware failure then a new drive is required

I have a question. On the list it says:

CATHY'~1 <DIR>

That is my folder, if I type that in will it open it?

The thing is.. my poems are like.. in a folder within a folder within a folder.

So it would have been something like cathy/poetry/anthology.. I think.

from d drive root
type

"cd directoryname"

then you will see that directory and every folder in it if you type

"dir/w/o/p"

once you get there...repeat the "cd directoryname" every time you find the next level folder.once you find your poem file as in "poemname.txt" or poemname.doc" you can copy that file to "A"drive by typing

"copy poemname.txt a:\poemname.txt"




PC911Racing The Gazette BBT Dubbers ExMadCows

Vitalt

Useful Team Info

MY POEMS HAVE BEEN SAVED!! *tears of joy*

I managed to get into the D directory, find my poetry files, and copy them to a disk.. everything seems to be okay on the D Drive, which is where most of my files are. So now I guess I will find the Windows 98 cd and try to reinstall windows? What would I do without you guys? I would have probably taken it in to futureshop and who knows what they would have done? then bought a new hardrive? Paid for some technician to work on it? And $500 later I bet I still wouldn't have my poems!!

Can I just say, I love you guys and I love this place.. I'm so glad it is not shutting down for good, but only relocating. (and thank goodness I came here today and not tomorrow, for you would have been gone & how would I have found you?! Ack!) You are awesome and deserve Uber-Goodness in all your lives!

You provide so much help for free, and I feel very grateful for it. It just goes to show that the world is still full of people who are willing to share their knowledge and wisdom out of generosity. I hope one day I will be able to help someone out with a computer problem - be sure that when I am able to answer even ONE question on these boards, I will throw a party

Hello,
Really pleased for you, I have, along with others I am sure, been following this thread with interest. Glad you managed to save your poetry.

Be good to see you in the new forum. Where perhaps you can learn about the value of backups etc. I am sure you dont want to go through all this again!

Great work guys,

Jim

I'm with mcnallyjp on this one. Fascinating to sit back and watch someone's problem get fixed so favorably, even though I wouldn't have had a clue myself what to do.

I was kind of hoping this thread would somehow just roll seamlessly onto pcqanda to hook them together.

Dave

Dave

Dell 8300 Dimension
Pentium 4
W XP Home


www.woodenpropeller.com

Yeah, interesting thread. Most interesting to me was the low, generic quality of paid MS support. I always thought you'd get some real whiz-kid. Silly me.

Yeah, BobG. It reminds me of how I ended up here (PC911) in the first place. I had been going around in circles with Gateway tech support (some free, some paid) when one of the techs mentioned PC911 as a resource. Guess when my last visit to Gateway was?

Dave

Dave

Dell 8300 Dimension
Pentium 4
W XP Home


www.woodenpropeller.com

That's great news. Now, to find out if your C: drive has failed.

lol, maybe I should have asked to speak to Bill Gates? They were very friendly, I will give them that..

You know I just went out for coffee to relax a bit now that I have all my poetry printed, photocopied, and filed in a safe, heh. Anyway, it occured to me that instead of typing "sys c:" I actually typed "sys c: remove diskette, and then reboot" Was I supposed to type all that or just "sys c:"?

umm .. should I maybe try that again?

"sys c: remove diskette, and then reboot"

All of that on one line would make that puppy puke. It should be sys c: at the a: prompt. Where are you now?

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LOL Yes just sys c:

lol OOPS! Okay by mistake I typed in sys d: And it said system transferred, is that terribly bad? but sys c: still says the same error message.

No harm, no foul. Go ahead and type it again with c:

What you just did was transfer system files to your D: drive making it bootable. But because it's your D: drive it won't boot from that drive unless bios is set up to boot from there. But, anyway it should not have hurt anything on that drive and can eventually be removed.
As long as you have your important files you could run scandisk to see if it finds any bad sectors. If that doesn't do it, download diagnostic utility to test the drive.

Okay thanks, it won't let me transfer it back to the C sector since it won't work.. but if I can fix that later than I won't worry about it.

So now I'm back at the A prompt, heh. So am I running scandisk or trying to reinstall windows?

Thanks!

Have you been sucessful with "sys c:"?

What exactly is the error message?

No the 'sys c:' doesn't work.. anytime I try to do anything with 'c:' it says can't read files from boot sector c.

Make sure you're running the command from the "A:" prompt. The actual prompt should look like "A:sys c:".

I'm thinking fdisk/mbr but I don't want to take liberties with your system. I can live with my own mistakes. Lets see what some others think. There's always scandisk to repair bad sectors and a disk diagnostic utility.

From the A: prompt type fdisk /mbr then press Enter. Remove the floppy disk and reboot.

If that doesn't fix it boot again with the boot floppy, and from the A: prompt with the boot disk in your drive, type scandisk C: and press Enter

The problem here is that track 0 on your hard drive may be damaged.

Shelly