The Official Computer Tech Support Thread

[Freebase Dali]

Originally Posted by TheBig3

So here's a question that I'd pay for help on.

I was downloading movie-player software from what I assume was a german site (another forum I'm on) and while doing it, crazy **** started to also download (or it looked like it was). Given that I couldn't stop it/close it/ect. I just ripped the power sourse out of my computer.

Since then, weird things have been going on. I'll start my computer and it won't get past a certain screen. When I shut it down (manually) and restart, it attempts to repair and ultimately restores things to a previous point.

From there, it always wants to delivery updates upon shutdown. But when I'm actually in using the computer, certain programs work, and certain ones don't. For some reason my iTunes files are there, but when I go to open the actual program it can't find it.

Its as if **** just went haywire and is stuck in an infinite loop of restoration, update, failure.

Yanking the power cord from the wall is probably the reason your computer is all jacked up, and you probably also have a virus in addition to that.
I'm not going to go into detail about how your computer writes to the registry when you're installing something and why you shouldn't power-off during this process (even Windows Update tells you not to shut your computer down during installations), but suffice it to say, it would have been less of a hassle if you had just let the software finish installing, then uninstalled it and run a virus scan.
Because now, you've likely screwed up something important. At this point, you may as well just back up any important data and reinstall the OS. That might seem like a drastic step, but if you did mess something up, no matter how many band-aids you put on this, you're going to live with problems down the line. The safest bet is to just start over again.

Also, if you somehow didn't know this, Windows 7 (assuming that's what you're using) has a backup capability. When you get your computer working nicely after a new install and all your data gets thrown back on it, and everything is perfect, use Windows Backup to create an image of your computer, and store it on an external drive that is large enough to hold it, which will be entirely dependent on how much actual data you have on your computer.
Set a scheduled task to back up your computer and overwrite the previous backup like monthly. This way, should anything ever happen, you simply insert your Windows installation disk and restore to the most recent image, which quite literally puts everything exactly as the way it was during the period that image was taken.
Restoring from a restore point is not that effective. It saves a system state, which means settings and things like that. System restore won't restore your data. So, if you're smart, you'll implement a backup plan that will not only keep your data redundant, but also let you restore it quickly and with minimal effort, which is completely possible by default in Windows 7.

If you don't wanna, then see you next time.

[Trollheart]

Freebase, will this work for all connected drives, incl external ones? I have three: two 1.5 tbs and and 1 tb, plus the installed one (also a tb) -- will the backup system copy all the data from the four drives (assuming I have something large enough to copy it to)? And does it compress the files, or do you literally have to have 1:1 in terms of data space?

I really should do this: I have such bad luck with PCs it's happened before and will surely happen again.

Thanks
TH

[Freebase Dali]

Originally Posted by Trollheart

Freebase, will this work for all connected drives, incl external ones? I have three: two 1.5 tbs and and 1 tb, plus the installed one (also a tb) -- will the backup system copy all the data from the four drives (assuming I have something large enough to copy it to)? And does it compress the files, or do you literally have to have 1:1 in terms of data space?

I really should do this: I have such bad luck with PCs it's happened before and will surely happen again.

Thanks
TH

You can dictate which drives you want to back up separately, or have them all included in one backup. I would recommend doing each drive separately, because it's not likely they'll all fail at once, and if/when a single drive fails, you won't have to restore everything, and just restore that one drive instead.

As far as backing up external drives, I would assume it would. I don't use externals all that often, so I haven't tried, but it will be apparent when you go to run a backup. The external(s) will either be included in the list of what to back up or not.

Regarding backup compression, Windows will compress whatever is able to be compressed. Whether it will make a significant difference will depend on what you have on your system. If you don't like the size of the backup(s), you can try to compress the image after the fact with something like Winrar or 7zip, where you can modify the compression settings, but this will require you to have to decompress before restoring from the image. Whether or not additional compression will make a significant difference is subject to experiment.

HTH

[TheBig3]

Originally Posted by Freebase Dali

Yanking the power cord from the wall is probably the reason your computer is all jacked up, and you probably also have a virus in addition to that.
I'm not going to go into detail about how your computer writes to the registry when you're installing something and why you shouldn't power-off during this process (even Windows Update tells you not to shut your computer down during installations), but suffice it to say, it would have been less of a hassle if you had just let the software finish installing, then uninstalled it and run a virus scan.
Because now, you've likely screwed up something important. At this point, you may as well just back up any important data and reinstall the OS. That might seem like a drastic step, but if you did mess something up, no matter how many band-aids you put on this, you're going to live with problems down the line. The safest bet is to just start over again.

Also, if you somehow didn't know this, Windows 7 (assuming that's what you're using) has a backup capability. When you get your computer working nicely after a new install and all your data gets thrown back on it, and everything is perfect, use Windows Backup to create an image of your computer, and store it on an external drive that is large enough to hold it, which will be entirely dependent on how much actual data you have on your computer.
Set a scheduled task to back up your computer and overwrite the previous backup like monthly. This way, should anything ever happen, you simply insert your Windows installation disk and restore to the most recent image, which quite literally puts everything exactly as the way it was during the period that image was taken.
Restoring from a restore point is not that effective. It saves a system state, which means settings and things like that. System restore won't restore your data. So, if you're smart, you'll implement a backup plan that will not only keep your data redundant, but also let you restore it quickly and with minimal effort, which is completely possible by default in Windows 7.

If you don't wanna, then see you next time.

Well ****.

Alright I'll have to find those discs.

Thanks.

[Trollheart]

Question for Freebase (or anyone): is there any way to make a normal CDRW disc writeable as a drive? In other words, to be able to save files (text) to it from within a wp prog rather than have to keep going into nero or whatever and re-burning the files? I want to use it as a removable backup for my journals, as the files have a habit of getting corrupted on the hdd, so this would be a way of ensuring I always had one working copy.

I remember it was possible to do something like set a CD up as a virtual drive once, way back in the mists of my youth, when recordable CDs were just getting going. But is it still possible, or practical now?

Thx

PS I tried it with a pen drive but somehow the same thing tends to happen... the amount of times I've had to rewrite reviews...!

[debaserr]

I attempted something similar with a Verbatim BD25. It worked fine (albeit slowly), then I started having corruption issues with the files after a large number of writes. I recommend something like dropbox over a CD-RW.

[Trollheart]

Must say that looks good Eric. Is the free option enough? I don't want to be paying a sub or anything if I can avoid it, but if the free one does very little maybe I should? How does it work with documents? Is this dropbox folder added as a location to save?

[debaserr]

I think the free version holds 5gb. I haven't used it before, but I assume you access the "dropbox" either through your browser or a program. Anything you drop into that is now available anywhere else you have that browser/program/login info.

[Freebase Dali]

You can definitely use a rewritable disc like you would use a thumbdrive. If you have Windows 7 you can simply insert the disc, and Windows will prompt you it you want to burn files to it, then it will give you an option to do what you're talking about.

Alternately, using something like Eric said is also an option, and a lot easier if you don't mind having your documents in the cloud. I use Google Drive, but you can use Dropbox as well. If all you're doing is storing documents, then you should be good with the amount of space you get for free accounts.

In both scenarios, you'll need to install the free client program on any computer that you're going to be syncing (uploading) from. It will allow you to specify a folder on that computer that, when a document is added to it or changed, the client program updates it on the server in the cloud. Then you can download that file from any other computer simply by logging into the site, and/or by installing the client program on that computer as well, and specifying the folder to sync to. In Dropbox's case, you would just go to Dropbox.com and log in, then you'll have access to your things. In the case of Google Drive, it's integrated into Google Chrome, so if you already use that it will make things pretty simple. In either case, if you have a synced folder on multiple computers, provided that the client is running on both ends, the files will sync all the way between folders without you needing to log in to the site, which is the major plus side of this kind of thing.

[Trollheart]

Thanks guys! Well I think even with the amount of writing I do it'll be some time before I'm up to a gig, never mind 5, so the free option would seem to be the one to look at.

I guess I can do both, as a sort of double-protection. Thanks for the info on the CDs Freebase, and thanks Eric for the rec for Dropbox: I'll look into that tomorrow.