[bear]

Ii figured I'd do an update on Willit? but because I did nothing to it, I figured I'd let you all know why. Two days of liquid sunshine for a start, but the real killer was both fairly new, 14 months and 5 months since purchase, P-4 computers crashed. Both were proprietory systems, a Toshiba Satellute laptop and the new Sony Vaio, On both I loaded Norton GoBack from Norton's System Works 2005. Margaret took the laptop to Hawaii to load all the pics from her son's 10th wedding anniversay and wedding vows renewal, the main reason I loaded GoBack was so the pics could be retrieved if her "X" screwed it up with him using it all the time. Anyway, a week after she got back, it started acting screwy and asked if I wanted to use GoBack to recover to the last known good boot. Sure, I figured, so I did the deed and the program promptly took out the Master Boot Record. So the computer went into a boot up loop and never recovered. The Sony did the same thing, ,but asked if we wanted to force an uninstall on GoBack, sure we did after what happened to the laptop. The dirty rotten program did the same thing a week later, and the Sony went into a boot up loop. So I called all three comnpany support folks and all three ended up transferring me to "script readers" in India. MicroSoft will not transfer me to anyone in Redmond, WA, but I can fax them. I did take someone's advice in this site and got SpinRite 6.0, it only took 3 days to go through the Sony hard drive. I was sending 2-3 e-mails to those folks too. Needless to say if and when I can talk to someone who can comprehend the english language and use the thought process instead of a book, I will be questioning all three company's parental status. I tried to get a drive docking station to work with the laptop hardrive and Murphy showed up, it would not work in any of my Win 98 comps or the laptop with a new hard drive. The driver CD was faulty, so I called that company and got new drivers e-mailed to me and that didn't work either. That drive station was bad, so I got two more one 3.5 and a 2.5. Haven't tried those yet, so I don't know how it's gonna go. I got many responses from SpinRite, the last one was asking if I wanted to return it and get Margaret's money back. She said YES, so I'll do that for her and get the program for myself. To wrap this up and quit venting, bottom line is, DO NOT INSTALL Norton GoBack if you want your data in the computers to be fairly? safe. Whew!!!

 

[BQS4]

Ron;
Take a couple of DEEP breaths, and let them out s-l-o-w-l-y.....

 

[simplemind7]

i think i can help you out.....

i had something similar happen to me, except it was my own dumb fault, i had a virus and used msconfig to try to eliminate it at startup, but i accidentily clicked on explorer, which basically makes windows explorer not start up when windows does, which makes windows more or less useless

what i did, was get my friend to come over with his computer and throw my hard drive in his computer too, but as a slave and still use his as a master that it will boot from, this allowed us to copy all the stuff i wanted to keep to his hard drive, then re-format mine, and re-install windows, then just send the files back onto my computer. this only works if both computers use the same file system (i believe it is only windows 2000 & XP that use an NTFS drive, while all previous versions of windows use a FAT32 drive, the 2 types don't get along well).

and lastly, if you never want to have problems with viruses/spyware/random crashes/etc. again, re-format the computer, snap the windows CD in half and install Linux, preferrably Ubuntu Linux... if you can find a way to break Ubuntu then I will be very impressed. if you are interested in going this way, let me know and i will explain about it a bit more... also, its free to get and use, all upgrades to it are completely free too, its just a little bit harder to use... mainly the setup portion, actual operation of it is quite similar to windows, it just looks different.

hope that helps some...

 

[nobody]

To All in ear shot, Peter Norton is one of the worst anal retentives out there. His system works for 95 and 98 caused more trouble than it helped and god forbid you loose a disc or try to return the junk. Let's see Norton said come on in to the ripper, antiexe, clez and redworm with bi weekly updates. Then said no viruses detected and locked the system from removing it or using another virus software.

 

[opelgt73]

and re-install windows, then just send the files back onto my computer. this only works if both computers use the same file system (i believe it is only windows 2000 & XP that use an NTFS drive, while all previous versions of windows use a FAT32 drive, the 2 types don't get along well).

I have never had a problem migrating between FAT32 and NTFS.


On linux, I am actually installing it on my moms computer right now. My little brother keeps installing crap on it and getting viruses and adware. So I am going to put linux on and put passwords on EVERYTHING. She only uses email and a we browser so it will be super stable for her.

I've already got the newest mandrake DVD install, but I have been thinking about checking out unbuntu.....

 

[bear]

I feel I have to apologize to the membership for my earlier outburst. I have been so frustrated over this and Willit? hasn't had anything done in the last week and a half. One thing I forgot to tell you was really wierd and frustrating and I believe another proprietory thing. Margaret's laptop does not have a floppy drive, so I put SpinRite on a CD and memory stick and told the laptop to boot from either or both. It didn't do it, so I went into the BIOS and turned off the hard drive and network boot ups and that still didn't work. That's when everything started going down hill. And Margaret isn't too happy with the time I'm spending on it either. I'm trying hard to save the data on both, but it looks like she's gonna lose it all if I can't get either drive accessed. Sorry to have bent your ears/eyes again. Maybe tomorrow things will get better tomorrow, I'm gonna try another hard drive in the Sony as a primary and make the original the slave to see if I can access it that way.

 

[SoCalOpelGT]

PC Troubleshooting

Hi Ron,

Being that your laptops are not so old, they should have Windows XP. XP has a built-in "System Restore" feature that works pretty well.

Have you tried booting into safe mode?

Do you have a Windows XP bootable CD, floppy, etc.

Send me an e-mail if you would like some help on this. I sometimes do this for a living.

rkavadas"at"df3tech.com

 

[72manta]

Norton

Ron, for what is worth, take Norton off your system, specially if there is another program running in the back ground.
After Loading Norton because my Spyware was up for renewal, I had the worse time, make a long story short two months down on the home computer,
I'm not a computer wiz, I'm just a user, so, you can just imagine the frustration, anyway, now my system is working fine and no Norton in site.
Best of luck, maybe Gary can help you with the problem.

 

[baz]

ron it looks like you will be joining the world on XP
i have never got any norton program to remove on 95 or 98 as they said the "add or remove program" was not able to remove it (not powerfull enough)

btw have you considered flashing the CMOS first and putting the date and time back in so it looses all info held in the boot sector mem

 

[bear]

Here's a bit more on clarification on the problems, the Toshiba is the laptop, the Sony is a desk top. After the problems started both computers would go into a bootup loop, showing the various means of booting up. I tried all four methods shown on the screens and it would go into the boot up mode again and come back with the same screen. I down loaded the boot floppies from Microsoft and tried them on the Sony and after all six were run through it, it told me to insert the CD. Neither one came with a Microsoft XP CD, they both came with their proprietory CD that would wipe the hardrive and reinstall the programs to "original" condition, meaning I would lose all data we put in them after they were purchased. Therein is my problem. They will not boot up, so I can't use any recovery programs other than SpinRite which uses it's own "FreeDOS" program to run the recovery program. Here's a question for you folks that don't have proprietory XP and upgraded to XP. When you loaded XP on your computers, did it do the same as my Win98 and leave all data on the drive and just load the OS? If that's the case, I'll go buy Home Edition of XP and see if that will work.

I've used Norton programs since it first came out with great results. In fact I still have 4.5, their latest DOS version on all my Win 98SE computers. I have been able to retreive data that was originally thought to lost, using their programs. I'm going to guess that this new GoBack program they acquired just hasn't gone through enuff R & D and needs to be removed from the market. Although I haven't had a problem with my Win 98 Comps with it installed, so far. It's appears to be just the XP systems it screws with. IDK. But to be on the safe side, it's coming out of all my comps. I appreciate all the suggestion and assistance offered, it is appreciated. I've got a few more things to try, if that doesn't get it.............Thanx again.

 

[bear]

It's time to put this mother bear to bed. I opened up the Sony case and it has an ATA hard drive, no IDE plug in slots, so I'm screwed there too. Thanx folks for all the moral support and suggestions. Margaret's gonna take it to the shop tomorrow. "Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose", hell, I didn't get close to breaking even.

Tomorrow I start on Willit? again after 2 weeks of screwing with these problems.