PC crisis

Well the PC has problems today. It was Home XP licenced three years ago but I awake to find it complaining about not being licenced for some inexplicable reason. Now its safe mode attempts. Im wondering if its a virus. Will try to fix now. At times like this I wish I was still a bench tech

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Pash

Does anyone else feel really annoyed when your pc's at home go wrong? I mean we spend all day dealing with this stuff and for stuff not to work at home is the final nail in the coffin!!!!

Turgon

Pash wrote: »

Does anyone else feel really annoyed when your pc's at home go wrong? I mean we spend all day dealing with this stuff and for stuff not to work at home is the final nail in the coffin!!!!

This could be bad. I dont think its the disk. Safe Mode gets me to a black screen with 'safe mode' written in each corner. But thats it. The mouse pointer moves on screen but you cant see anything to point at. Rescue disk was no good. Time to make a call methinks.

dynamik

Turgon, I should have figured this bad Juju was because of you. My machine locked up last night and then repeatedly rebooted before even getting through the POST.

In my case, it was just overdue for a good dusting

I really didn't need the extra stress on exam-night though. I'm freaking tired now. Oh well, at least now I have an excuse, if necessary...

nel

Pash wrote: »

Does anyone else feel really annoyed when your pc's at home go wrong? I mean we spend all day dealing with this stuff and for stuff not to work at home is the final nail in the coffin!!!!

Yes, thats why i leave my with its issues

i spend all day at work dealing with the things so i dont want to have to come home and deal with the same problems then haha

laidbackfreak

nel wrote: »

Yes, thats why i leave my with its issues i spend all day at work dealing with the things so i dont want to have to come home and deal with the same problems then haha

Im right there with ya, sadly tho the mrs still need me to support hers and gets upset when I treat her like a user lol I tell ehr when she ask's questions like one, then she's gonna be treated like on

Kaminsky

Have you recently done Microsoft Update? Mine has been complaining since some recent updates were put on.

Time for a full back up me thinks. I'm having that kind of luck recently.

Turgon

I think maybe some updates happened last night. Just talking to a couple of computer shops this morning it looks like these have caused some grief of late. I called MS who may be able to send me a media kit to reactivate it. That will take some time. We backed up the files over the weekend. It would be good to just get it working but I will need some sort of boot CD or what have you. We do have another system unboxed. Perhaps I can master slave the disk.

Turgon

I fired up the auxilary PC I have. Windows 2000 pro. I got it to work with the USB hub I have and the wireless adapter so I could get online with it. Then I got greedy and changed the screen resolution. Since then we have a PC that shows nothing on the screen. Cool. Need to get that issue resolved somehow.

Cant even see POST echo on screen. The device does not switch off properly using the big button. No wonder it was cheap on ebay, it was going to be a lab PC. Looks like my rack plans are out of the window this afternoon. More wasted rack time costs. Back to the PC mystery now..

nel

laidbackfreak wrote: »

Im right there with ya, sadly tho the mrs still need me to support hers and gets upset when I treat her like a user lol I tell ehr when she ask's questions like one, then she's gonna be treated like on

hahaha, now that is legendary! aslong as she doesnt give you sh*t like a user then your good to go!

Turgon

Well since I went for the 1024 screen resolution on the spare PC it's all bad. Nothing appears on the screen now. Would like to roll back. F10, F12, F1, Del provide no outs to BIOS. I took a look inside and removed a loose screw, perhaps that shorted something? Reseated a few things. Still no good. The fan works, not sure about the HDD. Maybe the CMOS bat is dead? Must be something to do with that res change. Will see if I can download a boot disk and see if the floppy drive bites.

blargoe

Our desktop team has seen that a few times, and it was almost always the disk, and sometimes just doing a chkdsk /r resolved it.

rsutton

Pash wrote: »

Does anyone else feel really annoyed when your pc's at home go wrong? I mean we spend all day dealing with this stuff and for stuff not to work at home is the final nail in the coffin!!!!

Yes! Don't forget all the support calls from friends and family. Those only annoy me when they do something like visit pron sites in IE5 and wonder why they got infected.

Pash

rsutton wrote: »

Yes! Don't forget all the support calls from friends and family. Those only annoy me when they do something like visit pron sites in IE5 and wonder why they got infected.

Mate tell me about it, this doesn't work as its supposed to, my friend so and so has this, how do I make it work like that....My step niece is already better than me at IT at 13, so she can become IT support now!

Turgon

blargoe wrote: »

Our desktop team has seen that a few times, and it was almost always the disk, and sometimes just doing a chkdsk /r resolved it.

Im going to bootdisk.com to see if I can get to a prompt and run some commands. I have one unit that is just black in safe mode and a second that just wont boot. Happy times.

wd40

You reminded me of a funny incident that happened some years ago.
I was playing with Linux, apparently it changes some settings in the boot partition, no big deal both windows an Fedora are working fine.

Then I decided to convert the boot partition to dynamic, and boom, system rebooted and never started again, I tried every thing, but it appears that the partition tables are gone!

I had no backups

, so out of fear of losing my data I bought a new HDD, added the old one as a slave and used a recovery application to get my data back.

Really happy Times

Turgon

Ok day two on the PC repair. Will try to boot to command prompt using recovery disks and call Microsoft to re licence. If that doesnt work three options:

1 Drop off at repair shop. Takes several days to turn around and costs money
2 Buy new disk and OS
3 Buy new system

System is aging now so a no brainer really.

Turgon

More fun. Problems with the floppy disk drive but I fixed that. The repair disks get me to the recovery options but the adminstrator password isn't known. Now attempting bootdisks to reset that.

Turgon

Well I may have reset the password now. Will know soon enough after loading 6 x recovery floppies..

dynamik

How many CCIEs does it take to do A+-level work?

I kid, I kid...

Turgon

Dunno Im not a CCIE yet. Might not be smart enough.

Ok the password was reset and the recovery CDs got me to a prompt. Ran chksdk. Now I need someone at Microsoft to get XP activated again over the phone. Just spoke to the Indians and they gave me a UK number.

dynamik

Turgon wrote: »

Dunno Im not a CCIE yet. Might not be smart enough.

Whatever. You round up at this point as far as I'm concerned. You're just taking your time in making it "official"

Turgon

dynamik wrote: »

Whatever. You round up at this point as far as I'm concerned. You're just taking your time in making it "official"

hehehe..not sure I heard that phrase before 'you round up'. Is that bad?

Ok went over some stuff at the command line with the MS dude. Nothing could light the desktop up. Everything is backed up so will try a full reinstall. Time to put the coffee pot on.

laidbackfreak

Turgon wrote: »

hehehe..not sure I heard that phrase before 'you round up'. Is that bad?

Ok went over some stuff at the command line with the MS dude. Nothing could light the desktop up. Everything is backed up so will try a full reinstall. Time to put the coffee pot on.

lol quiter

P

actually i think i wouldve done that a while back, if I had it all backed up you wouldve been up n running by now

veritas_libertas

laidbackfreak wrote: »

lol quiter P

actually i think i wouldve done that a while back, if I had it all backed up you wouldve been up n running by now

I was thinking the same thing. Sometimes it's just not worth it to fight with MS.

Turgon

veritas_libertas wrote: »

I was thinking the same thing. Sometimes it's just not worth it to fight with MS.

Well it would have saved me the fight I will have tonight for drivers on this old Pavilion while I get XP running on it. That and a phone call to MS later to convince them to give me a licence code..

veritas_libertas

Turgon wrote: »

Well it would have saved me the fight I will have tonight for drivers on this old Pavilion while I get XP running on it. That and a phone call to MS later to convince them to give me a licence code..

Yikes! I feel for ya...

Plantwiz

Turgon wrote: »

Well it would have saved me the fight I will have tonight for drivers on this old Pavilion while I get XP running on it. That and a phone call to MS later to convince them to give me a licence code..

Ah, but it is all 'experience' and no book would properly cover the patience one needs to endure a long MS call or even one requiring activation and the interigation they'll put you through after your left to clean up another tech's mistakes (and activate) yet again the same code on the same machine....takes me back....

If nothing else Turgon, you've made me smile today

Turgon

Plantwiz wrote: »

Ah, but it is all 'experience' and no book would properly cover the patience one needs to endure a long MS call or even one requiring activation and the interigation they'll put you through after your left to clean up another tech's mistakes (and activate) yet again the same code on the same machine....takes me back....

If nothing else Turgon, you've made me smile today

hehehehe..well Im glad I made you smile, also glad I managed thus far without having to PM you for some tips! I used to do a lot of this but it was a long time ago in a galaxy far far away..;)

Still at here. There is a repair option after the 6 disks, after putting in the XP home edition CD, but it wants an XP home edition service pack CD 1 to attempt a repair. Dont have one of those. Perhaps it wouldnt have made any difference. Reboot and 6 disks again then followed by a full install...should be a fun evening making everything work after I get the little one off to bed.

Turgon

Ok well it turns out the install asks for the XP service pack 1 CD. Dont have that and with the CD burner located on the PC that needs the OS we have a problem. Time to ask a neighbor.

dynamik

Turgon wrote: »

hehehe..not sure I heard that phrase before 'you round up'. Is that bad?

Hah, no. Didn't you go to elementary school?

It's from rounding decimals (i.e. 1.5 rounds up to 2). I just consider you to be mostly there, so you "round up" all the way

Too bad it doesn't work like that in reality, eh?