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.