Windows error!!


Sheldon

New member
OK M back on line on my old laptop, my new VISTA machine that has run flawlessly until now had a "Unrecoverable windows error".

The good news I have made a backup set late October, bad news is I lost all of my vacation photos from Knob Creek, so now I keep a 2gig thumbnail for photo backup.

I have been told that the data may still be recoverable despite a full re install of the OS. Thoughts, ideas or who can on this please...

Why did it do this??? at this point I do not know, it took me close to 18 hours to get the thing running again, but i could not get the restore files to install, n have a geek friend working on that, I suspect failed memory, or a virus e mail that kept showing up in my on line e mail account, (their spam filter was not working) and may have downloaded despite my 2 firewalls, and full download scanning.

This is just a word of advice to all out there, keep current backups, full restore sets, the DVD format can hold a heap more data, and all critical data on a separate and easily usable media, such as a USB drive. One that is quick and easy to use, Yes I have a huge USB drive that is a pain to get to, not so the thumb nail types. Had I used the thumb nail I would still have all my photos, and not just the ones I dumped on Photo bucket.
 

I am an IT person by trade, and the likelihood of retrieving your info from a reinstalled hard drive, is not good. If it would have been prior to the reinstall, your outlook would be much better. You could have placed your hard drive in another computer and pulled off the info. There are companies that can pull info off the reformatted drive, but it is expensive and no guarantees on what you will get. Never reinstall before pulling off the info you need. Only requires another computer, your geek friend should be able to assist.

It today's digital age (pictures, music, movies, etc.), it is more important than ever to back up all your files. Personally, I store my stuff on the computer, a large USB hard drive, and monthly backup that info to DVD. Thumb drives work, but I have way too much stored data, and they are not always foolproof.

As to why Vista did that, only good old Bill Gates would know. I have always been weary of its stability, one of the reasons I am still on Windows XP. A couple of more service packs, and I may consider it. A virus or a corrupt file are probably your likeliest causes, hardware normally doesn't cause this kind of error. Hope this information helps, but I know the pain never goes away on something like this.:mad:
 
Did you reformat the drive before you re-installed Windows??? If not, you may still be able to recover data. Look up a program called Stellar Phoenix.

For future reference, if this type of thing happens again, try running "Last Known Good Configuration". You can get to this by pressing the F8 key before Windows starts loading. Also, try booting to the CD and access the Recovery Console and run the "Chkdsk /r" utility.
 
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You might also try defragmenting the C drive in addition to what the others have suggested. Good luck.
 
this all started when I ran my weekly defrag, that is why I am leaning toward a memory issue, N I did try the last known trick, as well as I ran CDSK from DOS, and a memory check from the BIOS and a HD check there as well, it all looked good, I could not boot in safe mode, or go to a previous at all, it just kept going into the blue screen trying to fix the problem, and then re booting, then after several hours of that game it just would give the boot screen then shut down, so I had to F11 it and re install, and still it did not want to work, had to boot from the CD to finally get it up and running, but none of the back up files installed, it ran but as a new system with all the crap they put on the screen, the killer is it made back up copies on my (this laptop has two hard drives) second drive but all that data disappeared when windows re installed.
 
this all started when I ran my weekly defrag, that is why I am leaning toward a memory issue, N I did try the last known trick, as well as I ran CDSK from DOS, and a memory check from the BIOS and a HD check there as well, it all looked good, I could not boot in safe mode, or go to a previous at all, it just kept going into the blue screen trying to fix the problem, and then re booting, then after several hours of that game it just would give the boot screen then shut down, so I had to F11 it and re install, and still it did not want to work, had to boot from the CD to finally get it up and running, but none of the back up files installed, it ran but as a new system with all the crap they put on the screen, the killer is it made back up copies on my (this laptop has two hard drives) second drive but all that data disappeared when windows re installed.

Ah... okay. I didn't realize you were getting the "blue screen of death". Yeah that is usually memory related and sometimes a bad driver. Good luck getting it back in order.
 
If there's a lesson to be learned in all of this, it's to back up all your important files. I'm sure you won't ever make the mistake of not backing them up ever again, will you?
 
If there's a lesson to be learned in all of this, it's to back up all your important files. I'm sure you won't ever make the mistake of not backing them up ever again, will you?

No the lesson here is to make back up copies frequently, and any time you make a change both before and after. My last restore set was was made middle October.:shout:
I should have done it as soon as I returned home just before Halloween with the laptop from my trip, the external 200 gig drive is a very good method but it's not real friendly to take on a trip, you have to get it out, plug it in, power it up, connect the cable, then you get to do the backup. They have 8 gig thumbnail drives now, and that will cover most all of your needs and is very portable and is as easy as plugging in the USB port. Yeah I bought one for the laptop case talk about closing the barn door....:help:
 
...it's that Windows sucks and you should get a Mac.

There, fixed it for you. :wink:

Tried a MAC when the youngest son was in HS... it was sluggish, sloppy, and primitive compared to my Windows OS, I all my years of PC's I have to say this is actually the first time I have ever encountered this, and could have avoided a lot of it had I just kept my photo file back up current
 
Tried a MAC when the youngest son was in HS... it was sluggish, sloppy, and primitive compared to my Windows OS, I all my years of PC's I have to say this is actually the first time I have ever encountered this, and could have avoided a lot of it had I just kept my photo file back up current

If it was a G3 or earlier, I could see why you'd feel that way. The most recent ones are much better. I'd go with one of those before I'd go with a PC.
 
If there's a lesson to be learned in all of this, it's to back up all your important files. I'm sure you won't ever make the mistake of not backing them up ever again, will you?

especially when you are dealing with vista... in my opinion anyway. a friend's laptop stopped working not long ago too.. just out of the blue.
 
Tried a MAC when the youngest son was in HS... it was sluggish, sloppy, and primitive compared to my Windows OS, I all my years of PC's I have to say this is actually the first time I have ever encountered this, and could have avoided a lot of it had I just kept my photo file back up current
I use both, but OSX tends to have inherent stability advantages as it's built on a unix file system. Unix is like a 1911 pistol - proven, reliable and never goes out of style. Previous versions of OS were highly proprietary and were less user-friendly. OSX was built essentially from the ground up to ensure a better user experience.

Windows is put together in a rather scattershot method and new features are often added in a way that tries to justify the existence of old areas that they simply aren't willing to do away with. It's all built on justified obsolescence, as if it were designed by several government departments working together.

There are some areas of Apple that I find annoying, though - particularly the lack of a physical eject button on the optical disk drives, which makes it difficult to eject something if the machine won't completely boot up.
 
especially when you are dealing with vista... in my opinion anyway. a friend's laptop stopped working not long ago too.. just out of the blue.

Nothing just stops working out of the blue, system Age, too much gunk on the HD, lack of system maintenance, Hardware failure, and the biggie, virus downloaded from a questionable site or sent to you by someone with too much time on their hands. Which I have to admit you do not see as many hackers building malware for the apple platform.
Also at the top of the list are web sites such as 'Face Book" and "AOL" that load snooper routines that will eventually trash your machine. "MY Space" is very bad about this too, I use to have to do constant damage control on my kids machines because of places like these!
 
Nothing just stops working out of the blue, system Age, too much gunk on the HD, lack of system maintenance, Hardware failure, and the biggie, virus downloaded from a questionable site or sent to you by someone with too much time on their hands. Which I have to admit you do not see as many hackers building malware for the apple platform.
Also at the top of the list are web sites such as 'Face Book" and "AOL" that load snooper routines that will eventually trash your machine. "MY Space" is very bad about this too, I use to have to do constant damage control on my kids machines because of places like these!

That all depends on what you mean by "out of the blue." And yes, computers, just like anything else, can just conk out for no apparent reason.
 

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