Karma Is A Bitch
Just a couple of days ago, I was going on and on about Susan f&%@ing up her laptop.I should have known better.
Barely an hour after I finished the post, my computer started acting funny. First, it started to slow down and lag. Next, programs wouldn't open.
It wouldn't even shut down properly.
I figured a shut down and restart might be the best option.
The shutdown part went wonderfully. It shut down incredibly quickly and with no problems.
Pulling the power cord does that.
Okay, so shut down part was done.
Check.
And then to restart...
Restart...
Re... Start...
Huh. Look at that. Apparently, I changed my wallpaper to a big black screen.
And removed all of my icons.
And my taskbar.
My mouse was there. That's how I figured out two pieces of information:
1) it's not my monitor
2) it's not my mouse
Aside from that, I didn't know shit. It could have been the freaking dilithium crystals for all I freaking knew.
My harddrive with gigs upon gigs of irreplaceable (and probably not backed up) files could be reduced to cinders and ashes.
But the mouse still works, right? It's all about the little victories, people.
And what do I see when I turn my head?
That's right. Susan's smug grin.
That shit ain't funny.
Oh, yeah. It was the end of the freaking world when her computer was nothing but digital ruin, so much technology done in by a mediocre reality show.
When it's my computer, suddenly the whole thing is freaking hilarious.
Oh, oh, it's just a computer.
That's like saying it's just a lung. Or a kidney.
Not a liver. I'm WAY nicer to my computer than my liver.
And the whole time, she's typing away on her's. Playing Text Twist.
MotherF&%@ing Text Twist.
My computer, my tiny, technological idol, my only connection to my people is broken and she's smiling and playing Text Twist.
Do you know a six letter word for that? BETRAYAL.
I know that's not six letters. I couldn't think of a six letter word that would make sense.
Spelling is hard.
So, now I'm here, using a system cobbled together from random spare parts and duct tape, trying to figure out what the hell happened.
And what's Susan doing?
Still playing Text Twist.
BETRAYAL.
Goddammit. I KNOW THAT'S NOT SIX LETTERS!
Can't you people just leave shit alone?
posted by Goblin Smithy @ 8:14 PM
23 Comments:
That happened to me a while back, except replace "mouse on a black screen" with "laptop beeping angrily and claiming it doesn't have a hard drive".
The hard drive is working (I got it hooked up to my desktop), although windows screwed up taking ownership and now I'm missing all of My Documents. Which is what I wanted to save.
Happened to me when I was working as a network grunt at the office. I was finish up a computer, had updated and installed every single piece of software the employees needed. I rebooted and when I log back in -BAM- black screen, the mouse pointer and a minimum of processes running.No wallpaper, no taskbar. A nice error message which said "The side-by-side configuration is wrong" popped up when I tried to start explorer.exe(ctrl+alt+delete still worked).
I spent hours looking for a fix for it, but it was in vain.
As if that wasn't bad enough, the above was not an isolated case..oh no...and all we could do was to reinstall from scratch :( Oh, and it was Windows Vista. In my cause I figured it had something to do with our domain, but I could not verify it.
So Dave, if you recognize the above scenario, connect the harddrive to another computer and salvage the files. I doubt using a Linux LiveCD and an external HDD would work, since the computer was not shutdown properly. NTFS is such a bitch that if you don't shut it down the proper way, it'll be locked. Linux-systems can't access it. Has caused me much pain over the years...
If you don't already use an online backup solution, I can recommend dropbox(only 2 gigs, but your most precious files will be safe and sound).
Good luck with recovering that data!
Sorry to hear about that Dave. Good luck fixing it. Remember if all else fails just hit it with a hammer. It might not fix it, but you will fill alot better.
If you use Windows, you should always install it in a separate partition, that way if anything goes wrong you can reinstall windows and it'll pretty much always fix it (assuming it's not a hardware problem, but this doesn't sound like that) and still have all your files, though you'll probably have to reinstall a good number of programs since the registry will have been cleared.
If you don't have windows on a separate partition, Windows XP allows you to repair your windows installation by booting it up with the install CD in. when you select to install windows on the partition it's already on, it will ask if you'd rather repair the installation, then do so. If it doesn't ask this, STOP, since it will just write over everything. A successful repair install will fix any problems windows is having, and you shouldn't need to reinstall any programs afterwards.
If that doesn't work, go to www.ubuntu.com and download the latest version as an ISO file, then burn that to CD and boot from it. This lets you use ubuntu completely from CD, even if your HD is 100% dead. Anyway, in Ubuntu check to see if your hard drives are still alive and if so, back up your stuff somehow. Now that you've got your stuff copied off you can reinstall windows without wiping it all away. As stated before, it's recommended to put Windows on a separate partition from all of your files and programs, 20 GB is enough for XP, 30 or so is better for a newer version of it.
That's the sum of my knowledge in thsi area, I hope you can get things working again soon.
The cure for Windows is Linux.
The liver is evil and must be punished.
Did you try turning it off and on again? :D
Dave, long time reader first time commenter.
Try downloaded miniPE, it'll be in iso format. Burn that to disk and boot it up as a CD-rom from your other machine.
The program itself is a miniature operating system with it's own diagnostics tools, if you know what each of them does it'll tell you what is wrong with your system.
There are also methods of extracting files directly from your hard-drive locations and backing them up onto something else. I myself used a large external drive to retrieve my files.
If you're seeing a mouse curser your hard-drive is probably fine, sounds like your windows has been corrupt (I'm assuming you use windows).
Hope this info helps. But hey maybe you can ask Susan if you can play text twist.
Susan is super hacker?
My condolences. When is the memorial?
I've had the same issue a few days ago, computer would boot up to a blank screen with just the mousecursor showing.
boot up into safe-mode (f8 during boot, yaddayadda) download and install the lastest graphics card drivers and your good to go again.
Jesus saves! ....and makes incremental backups....
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Did she happen to use your computer while you were fixing hers the other day...?
When I had a hard drive failure, I pulled it out of the laptop at a restaurant, and slammed it hard onto the table. Then put it back in. That was 3 years ago and that laptop is functional to this day with that hard drive in it.
@ Sparf
I wonder if that works with girlfriends.....
@Leut
The fact that I know that beating the shit out of a hard drive should tell you that I don't have experience with girlfriends. lol.
Warning: Unsolicited advice to follow
First, go out and buy yourself (or order from the internet to avoid those damn people things) a sata / IDE to USB adapter, pull your HD out and do a complete backup of it to another system (Your cobbled together box, or Susan's, I'm assuming your using Win XP, NT backup is nice for this).
Second, throw your HD back in your PC and boot it, when you get to the background/mouse only hit CTRL+ALT+DEL, start the task manager, hit new task and run explorer.exe. This will usually get your interface back up and running, for you to do some diagnostics. Naturally, don't connect it to the internet or the network. I'd suggest running a full scan with your anti-virus program and malware bytes.
It's also advisable to run the scans in safe mode from a different user profile, and then from your normal user profile (usually things throw reg keys to auto-run in your user profile, so it's always best to do both).
Once you get all the nasty bits off your PC (if you can) you may find explorer.exe has been modified or damaged, or that you must manually start it each time (no autoload, just the modified background / mouse). In that case you might try start > run > command and doing an sfc /scannow to see if it can repair the system files, if not, you may just have to reformat and restore from the previously made backup.
Hopefully this may help some, or you can just ignore it all.
Hey, don't mess with Text Twist! That game is the shit!
I mean, bretrayal. Yeah.
Please don't send an incendiary device to my house.
Let's see... you can see your mouse... and it's moving... but nothing else loads.
...
Well, clearly the hard drive works, or you wouldn't have anything to boot into. Plus it wouldn't have any way to load the image for what the mouse arrow looks like.
It's running really slow though...
Well, I'm thinking it's a bad sector in one of your ram sticks. the computer doesn't spontaneously give you a BSOD does it?
Run a memtest. if everything checks out, then the hard drive is the only other problem. yes, i know i said the hard drive is working, but i didn't mention its work ethic. just because it's working enough to show you a graphic for your mouse arrow doesn't mean it's not being lazy as hell with everything else.
Why are you still using windows? don't you know that in the latest Ubuntu and Wine version that FFXI will run almost flawlessly? http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=2739
wait, i got a better idea. reformat susan's hard drive and put linux on that. NOW try and text twist! (I'm sure she'll be able to, but the point is to make it more of a chore...). I'll tell you what the betrayal is: text twist over ffxi? I suppose that would have been more torture. getting a rare/ex nm drop while your pc's out of commission...
Whatever, no matter what the case is, susan's mean. :P
Hurry up and fix that pc dave... the longer your jormy macro stays dead, the more exponentially the morons multiply!!!!!!!
Hold on a moment. Dave, you can rescure your files through a Linux LiveCD and an external HDD(as other people have mentioned). I realized that while you did not shut down the system properly the first time(as I mentioned above), you can boot up and shut it down from the login screen. Then NTFS will no longer be locked. Details...details :)
So you simple click on "Places" in the Ubuntu menu, then on your harddrive. Done! Now you have access. Plug in an external HDD and just copy the files to it.
If for some unknown reason that's very unlikely, it's still locked, read below(and if you're not familiar with Linux, try and consult someone you know who is):
Option A: Force mount it through Linux. Plenty of tutorials available, but quite complicated. Risk of data loss in this one.
Option B is this(and I base this on that you can install applications while in the LiveCD(installing to the ram). Dunno if this has changed since I did it): http://mpathirage.com/how-to-fix-ntfs-mount-error-on-ubuntu/
I've never tried it myself, and I don't know if those packages are still in Ubuntu 9.10.
Other folks has suggested loads of great options. Try out whatever you feel like :)
Best Regards
André
Gotta love the duct tape, though.
Here's a six letter word:
OHSHIT
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