Here I am just finished my RTK 1 a week or so ago and working on RTK3, when my computer stops working. my laptop still works but its one of those eepcs with a 12gig harddrive.

all my japanese audio, video, etc probably gone. there must have been over 300 gigs or so of japanese stuff. all my bookmarks gone. i built the computer when i was in japan back in january of this year. it cost me about 1,000 in parts.

now i don't know what i am going to do. do i go to a pc repair place and spent a few hundred or so getting it fixed? or should i just sell it? I am returning to japan in january and this big pc was ssuch a pain to bring back in the first place. looks like i will need to keep up my immersion environment with just audiobooks and music until january if i dont fix the big computer.

grrrr....

What exactly do you mean "Stops working"?

EDIT: I mean like what exactly is the problem?

What part is faulty?

If it's the HDD that has died that'd be a real pain but if it's not and you can salvalge all the media off it then that's worth doing.

Most "my computer died" problems have nothing to do with the computer, just Windows becoming corrupt to the point where it'll no longer boot, thanks to viruses, poorly written software installers/uninstallers, user error, etc. As such, your data is still probably all there, unless a virus payload detonated and erased everything.

Yeah, I've never actually had a hard drive fail on me unless it's rediculously old. I would see about other problems first, if the HD can't be detected it's probably a mobo problem or one of your cables is knackered.

the harddrive can be detected it started a few days ago. slowed down computer to where movies would get really choppy, then next day computer even slower until barely ran at all. got it booted in safe mode, wwhere i can antivirus scans, an other utilities to see if that would fiix the problem.

when that didnt work i tried using the deffragler program. it took about 15 hours to get to 87% then the defrag program crashed. since then my computer won't even start. soo frustrating.

to a different degree this happened with both other versions of windows i was running. not exactly the same way. last 2 times it happened first was with japanese windows xp, when i restarted my computer and it would suddenly keep restarting itself then got worse. with american version of xp, same thing happened.

this latest time is while running windows 7 with japanese language pack.

*cry* i was soo dedicated listening 24/7 watching tvs shows and movies unsubbed, was up to 220 sentences. i can still do the sentences and anki on this laptop its just soo frustratin.

hmm just opened pc and fans are coated with dust. maybe thats whyy?

Possibly overheated.. Clean it out, reset all the parts (you said you took it overseas, getting bumped around might have loosened something) including the heatsink (maybe put some new paste on while you're at it), and try again. I'm assuming that when you press the power button nothing happens.

You should have bought a case with dust filters on the vents

In any case even if you cooked your cpu/gpu/mobo, the harddrive is probably safe. You could buy an external case, drop it in, and get your data onto the laptop.

yeah i will get it cleaned tomorrow before work. i am thinkinng of buying compressed air and doing it myself, but it seems dangerous blowing compressed air on pc parts and motherboard.

jacf29 Wrote:hmm just opened pc and fans are coated with dust. maybe thats whyy?

It could be, clean them carefully, it's not harmful to clean them.
The computer becoming worse and worse, the cause can be the Motherboard, it happened to me, it can be the HD too,but those can break after some long time, like 2+ years.

This sounds stupid but it sometimes works! Tried it myself. Which is to clean your motherboard with a clean cloth that has medical alcohol on it, and leave the Mobo a little to dry then run the PC, don't be afraid it won't harm it.
I've tried that a long time ago on my Fax Modem that suddenly stopped working (PC couldn't see it), and it worked after that

Good luck.

Edit: if it's overheating, the PC should run fine but suddenly shuts down, none the less, the fans shouldn't be coated in dust.

jacf29 Wrote:yeah i will get it cleaned tomorrow before work. i am thinkinng of buying compressed air and doing it myself, but it seems dangerous blowing compressed air on pc parts and motherboard.

Using a vacuum cleaner also does the trick. Just use minimum power and be careful. Compressed air has the disadvantage of pushing the dust further in. Dust in the fans/radiators makes a huge difference for overheating problems but if your PC won't start when it's cold cleaning the dust probably won't solve your problem.

Either it was a hard disk problem so trying to defrag it was the worse thing you could have done as it finished the job of killing it. Or the problem was something else but crashing during defrag left your system in a non working state. In that case, you can still recover your data and reinstall.

Codexus Wrote:

jacf29 Wrote:yeah i will get it cleaned tomorrow before work. i am thinkinng of buying compressed air and doing it myself, but it seems dangerous blowing compressed air on pc parts and motherboard.

Either it was a hard disk problem so trying to defrag it was the worse thing you could have done as it finished the job of killing it. Or the problem was something else but crashing during defrag left your system in a non working state. In that case, you can still recover your data and reinstall.

I defragged a HDD to death before. I still facepalm myself when I think about it.

i had my hard drive fail just recently myself, thank God my deck was synced on Anki

I had my HDD drive fail a couple of months ago and thought I had lost everything as well. I ran chkdsk using the XP disk and going into the recovery console, this took a long time, but eventually after starting it up (many times) after this (it would get stuck at windows loading screen) it just kicked in and I immediately took all my files off via external HDD.

This may or may not work for you.

My neighbors hard drive failed as well a few weeks ago. I tried booting with a live cd but at first the hard drive wouldn't mount from a ubuntu live cd because the filesystem was so corrupted, probably the state your hard drive is in due to the uncompleted defrag. However, after chkdsking it with the XP disk, even though windows was corrupted beyond recovery, ubuntu could mount it and I could access their files. So try booting your computer with a live cd and see if it can access your hard drive.

Sounds like a memory problem to me. The symptoms are similar, but it is more likely that memory will fail first in hom-built PC's (I've worked in IT for years, and handled thousands of desktops and laptops). There's a way you can tell for sure: Hitachi Drive Fitness Test. Burn that to a CD and see what kind of result you get. If that passes (good news) run memtest86 to see if it's a memory problem as I suspect.

In any case, you should invest in a ATA or SATA to USB dongle. This is an invaluable asset to have as you can just pop the hard drive out and attach it to another machine in less than a minute. It's much safer to recover data from a machine you know works.

(sorry I have to say this)
Let this be a lesson to all ya PC Window users
*patting my Mac

edit: I do feel you, things like that forced me to the Apple side, havent had any trouble since.

These are some Lifehacker posts that would be useful for you:


Five Best Free System Restore Tools
BackTrack is a Security-Focused Live CD Packed With System Tools
Five Best Free Data Recovery Tools

@Musashi don't feel too smug. the likelihood of physical components failing is irrespective of the OS you are running. We had a lot of Mac users come in with problems like this (in fact, more than you would think given the percentage of Mac-vs-PC users where I worked). In some cases we could help them, but in many cases all we could say was take it to the Apple store and cross your fingers... and often that results in losing ALL of their data because of Apple's idiotic service policies. If you have a Mac, I hope you have a regular backup (or two).

mafried Wrote:@Musashi don't feel too smug. the likelihood of physical components failing is irrespective of the OS you are running. We had a lot of Mac users come in with problems like this (in fact, more than you would think given the percentage of Mac-vs-PC users where I worked). In some cases we could help them, but in many cases all we could say was take it to the Apple store and cross your fingers... and often that results in losing ALL of their data because of Apple's idiotic service policies. If you have a Mac, I hope you have a regular backup (or two).

Aww snap Musashi! Take that you Mac-using loooser! PC RULEZ

Well I'm cant say I can complain now, I was a PC user for many years, it was always something that didnt work. One day I totally had it when my computer failed to work after the gazillion format and kicked the darn thing to the curb and went out the next minute to buy a mac. It was like the miracle PC from heaven

@ruiner
*ignores

cleaned computer and still messed up. i think i might buy a new hard drive

Musashi Wrote:(sorry I have to say this)
Let this be a lesson to all ya PC Window users
*patting my Mac

edit: I do feel you, things like that forced me to the Apple side, havent had any trouble since.

"Real" men use Linux

kazelee Wrote:

Musashi Wrote:(sorry I have to say this)
Let this be a lesson to all ya PC Window users
*patting my Mac

edit: I do feel you, things like that forced me to the Apple side, havent had any trouble since.

"Real" men use Linux

On that note, I just messed up my secondary machine while trying to install Xubuntu. <<

kazelee Wrote:"Real" men use Linux

Does...does this mean I'm finally a man? Woohoo!!

And they called me a wimp in school. Psht.