Computer Problems

JohnDar

Prolifically Gabby Member
My laptop has taken a major dump and I had to do a PC Recovery from the drive partition. Unfortunately, I've lost the laptop monitor and have to connect a digital TV to it. I knew something was going south when the monitor started to flicker earlier today then went black. I've also lost most of my applications and data files from the hard drive. Fortunately, most of them were saved on an external hard drive. Just getting the laptop to reconnect to my wireless router and cable modem has been an exercise. I'm going to have to bump Dar off her desktop PC to do any serious interneting. Looks like time to replace mine, though. What little info I've found indicates replacing the monitor portion of a laptop is almost like buying a new one. Then the joy of trying to get all of my former applications back together. Grrrr...
 

caissiel

Senior Member
Sometimes loosing the monitor on a laptop is when the monitor power strips fails. I found the problem with a laptop that was warrantied 2 years ago. Its a strip that runs at the bottom behind the screen.

But you seam to have had a much more serious problem with you data and hard drive.
Have patience and good luck with all your work.
Looks like something that would keep me awake at nights.
 

JohnDar

Prolifically Gabby Member
Taking a short break. At least I've gotten the Internet back and my security software reinstalled. But this is temporary, I'm going to look for a new machine in the morning. Everytime a software app wants to restart the computer, I have to monkey around with the screen display so I can see everything. Fun updating stuff from 2006.
 

ziggy

Retired Oregon HOC
I feel for you. However if you've had it since 2006, it's had a pretty long life.Kristy
 

Ray LeTourneau

Senior Member - Past Moderator
Well John, your problems sound worse than mine. Maybe just a coincidence but it seems mine has started acting up when we left Camp Gotchurwallet. I've lost all functions of the keyboard, mouse and anything related to the keys. Everything works fine using a wireless mouse & keyboard. I've tried a restart but no luck.
 

JohnDar

Prolifically Gabby Member
Yeah, I'll have to rebuild all of my website links and some of my e-mail addresses. And I had a ton of them links. Most, but not all of the e-mail addresses are still on my Comcast account, but I used MS Outlook Express as my primary. It'll give me something to do at Camp Gotchurwallet when it's too crummy to play outside.

The older you get, the more expensive the toys get.
 

nscaler2

Well-known member
Yeah, I'll have to rebuild all of my website links and some of my e-mail addresses. And I had a ton of them links. Most, but not all of the e-mail addresses are still on my Comcast account, but I used MS Outlook Express as my primary. It'll give me something to do at Camp Gotchurwallet when it's too crummy to play outside.

The older you get, the more expensive the toys get.
John,
When you get the new computer and rebuild your website links (bookmarks), I would suggest you do a google on xmarks. It is a service that I have been using for years that automatically backs up your bookmarks on a web server. It can be used for free however for 19.95 / year it has some other features that are nice. Anyway when rebuilding your computer or needing to keep the same bookmarks on more than one computer, you just log into your account and ask it to reinstall your bookmarks and then they are there just as before. What is neat is that it will keep more than one computer synced automatically. If you add a bookmark on one, the next time you start the other computer on the internet the new bookmark is automatically synced to the second computer. It has saved my life many times before. I have LOTS of bookmarks. Just thought this might help for the future.
 

ziggy

Retired Oregon HOC
I use xmarks on a total of 5 computers. It works really well. Firefox and Chrome both have a version of the same kind of thing, but xmarks works better for me across platforms and browsers.Kristy
 

Ray LeTourneau

Senior Member - Past Moderator
Update on my issue. I did another restart with the wireless receiver unplugged. Laptop worked normally. I plugged the receiver back in and everything seems OK. Confused, but glad mine is back to normal.
Good luck with yours John.
 

danemayer

Well-known member
I've been using Acronis True Image software for years with an external hard drive. Got one on my desktop at home, my wife's desktop, and on the laptop. True Image backs up a complete image of your drive so you recover everything when you have a disk failure (except whatever you may have done since the last backup). Every machine has had at least one disk failure over the years; my wife's computer has had 2. In each case, I got a new disk and restored the image to the new file without a lot of effort. When migrating to a new computer, you generally can't restore the old image to a new computer because the new computer usually requires different system software and drivers. But it helps some when you replace the computer, because you can recover the data files. If you keep your eyes open, you can often find it on sale for $30 and sometimes for $20. Where possible, get an external drive 2X the size of the disk being backed up. That allows you to set up the software to do 2 separate backup images, which would let you recover to the older image if your disk started failing but worked well enough that a backup was created with some errors. You could set up an automatic backup schedule to do a primary backup image weekly and a fallback image monthly.
 

skyguy

Well-known member
We are able to recover a lot of data at our store, by removing the hard drive from the affected laptop, and installing that drive into a external USB 2.5 inch hard drive kit. In most laptops, the drive is located under a removable panel on the bottom of the system. After installing the drive into the external USB kit, plug the USB external drive into your new laptop, and it becomes another drive, just like flash or thumb drives. Then you can copy data. After you copy the data you need, you can use the drive for backups.

Both Seagate and WesternDigital provide free software on their websites for cloning (disk imaging) hard drives, jus like Acronis. The only requirement is that at least one of the hard drives being used is a Seagate, or WesternDigital.
 

JohnDar

Prolifically Gabby Member
Just got back from Best Buy. Bought two laptops (Dar's birthday and she's been wanting one for travel [I'm stingy with mine]). They'll have them set up and ready for pickup later today. Their 18 month no finance plan makes it less painful. I know I've got several nephews and nieces frowning somewhere over their dwindling inheritance prospects. It'll get worse for them;)
 

JohnDar

Prolifically Gabby Member
Waaa hoooo hoooo hooo!

Computer problem solved!! I'm now smoking on a Windows 7 laptop. Got my wireless router/cable modem linked, the external hard drive running, printer connected, and my wired mouse/keyboard (hate touchpads and chicklet keys) connected. Once I get done playing with mine, I'll link Dar's new toy to the router.

Dollar down and a dollar a week...
 

Ray LeTourneau

Senior Member - Past Moderator
Re: Waaa hoooo hoooo hooo!

Computer problem solved!! I'm now smoking on a Windows 7 laptop. Got my wireless router/cable modem linked, the external hard drive running, printer connected, and my wired mouse/keyboard (hate touchpads and chicklet keys) connected. Once I get done playing with mine, I'll link Dar's new toy to the router.

Dollar down and a dollar a week...
Time to double up on RAM ???? Talk about smokin!
 

skyguy

Well-known member
Re: Waaa hoooo hoooo hooo!

Smokin? Try upgrading to one of the new solid state drives (SSD). Now THAT's smokin!!

Not cheap, at approximate $2/gigabyte, but hey I remember when 20 Megabyte drives were $300!! (Or $1500 a gigabyte)

Al S.
 

Ray LeTourneau

Senior Member - Past Moderator
Re: Waaa hoooo hoooo hooo!

Smokin? Try upgrading to one of the new solid state drives (SSD). Now THAT's smokin!!

Not cheap, at approximate $2/gigabyte, but hey I remember when 20 Megabyte drives were $300!! (Or $1500 a gigabyte)

Al S.
I saw a TRS80 at a garage sale yesterday. I had to laugh. It made me think of the old Commador 64.
 

JohnDar

Prolifically Gabby Member
Re: Waaa hoooo hoooo hooo!

I saw a TRS80 at a garage sale yesterday. I had to laugh. It made me think of the old Commador 64.

Don't laugh too loud. I've still got my old Tandy Color Computer (16K I think it was), complete with tape cassette reader, down in the basement. Never know when it might come back in vogue. That and a 300 baud phone modem.
 

Buford445

Well-known member
Re: Waaa hoooo hoooo hooo!

Jon I've been using Google Bookmarks for yrs and you have access on ALL Computers hooked to the web. Glad you got everything worked out for you, my laptop died 2 weeks ago
 
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