I killed my new laptop

[Jim Oaks]

I haven't been able to work on The Ranger Station website because theres been a conflict with Front Page. It keeps telling me it can't locate some file, but the file isn't a Front Page file.

I decide to restore my Acer laptop using my (3) recovery discs. In the process of using the first disc the computer quit responding. I tried putting in disc 2 to see if it would get it to continure. No luck. I couldn't get it to do anything. It was a black screen with a gray empty box in the middle.

I turned it off and back on. Now I get an error message that says bootmgr not found when it tries to boot up. I had to ship it to Texas to Acer yesterday. I'll be without it for probably (2) weeks .

I'm using my old crappy laptop I gave my wife to use for now. I have to get my email setup on it so I can check it.

This really sucks.

 

[ufgators68]

Dude, you should have bought a Dell.







Sorry, couldn't resist.

 

[Dusty_Ranger]

dose your laptop frezze? or just shut down? you could always try the system restore points in the control panel, granted you have restore points saved

 

[Apollo-Soyuz 1975]

I've had a hard drive screw up a master boot record on me before; I managed to recover by popping in a Vista install disc (not factory recovery disc), opening the command prompt, and typing FIXBOOT + Enter. It's worrying that your PC stopped responding in the middle of the re-install, though.

 

[Ranger Kip]

grab a Dell Latitude, no joke, good durable laptops
get the business style ones, you have to order then, they cost a bundle, but worth every penny, I still use them from 2001, and I have 2ghz of Processing power, 1gb of Ram, a good size monitor, a 16mb graphics card, and a 30gb HD. + porting ability, we have 3 or 4 here.

 

[jhammel85]

Oh I know how you feel....

I sent mine to Acer when it went on the fritz a few months ago. Apparently cats will pee on hot laptops..at least mine will. They wanted 240 bucks to replace the motherboard (no warranty as the cat aparently screwed it up). I asked what they had done so far and they told me they cleaned it up. So I told them to just send it back and I'd like to have a look at it.

Once it returned, it worked perfectly fine. I guess the urine was causing a short. When they cleaned it, it must of fixed it.

Hope your experence ends up just as well!
Overall I was pretty happy with their service..I like Acer.

 

[BlackBII]

This is purely a software issue...not a hardware issue.

You could have re imaged windows in >1hr, and saved your data. I do it every day at work.

 

[hoosier1104]

Get off the MS tit and join the Penguin Club. It is FREE and there are millions of ppl running different variants of Linux. I myself am running Ubuntu 10.04LTS on my Dell. Man am I glad I stopped sucking on the MS tit. To each their own though. Best of luck Jim. Awesome site by the way.

 

[AllanD]

If the master boot record, paging file or several other "components" (software)
get lost or corrupted there is little you can do without some technical knowledge.

Frankly from the symptoms I'd say any added applications or data are likely lost, as there is no reliable way to resotore the operating system without overwriting the
registration files that "connect" the applications to the operating system.

The quick way to get such a computer back up and running is not simply feeding it the "restore" discs, until you have temporarily put the hard drive in another computer and checked it for errors, recovered what you can of your applications and data

and formatted the drive so you can start your re-install from a "clean slate" so to speak.

Frankly laptops are just so vulnerable to this type of failure you have to be
very careful to back things up.

And backups on the same (failure prone) physical (failure prone) hard drive
(failure prone) are worth about as much as a campaign promise from a
particularly slimy politician (several names come to mind but that's a
seperate discussion)



As for Linux? two issues, MANY applications simply won't run under Linux
and DRIVERS to make your hardware work correctly.

And unless you are really patient and technically savvy you'll never resolve the issues
Most people simply don't want to be bothered.

It's a can of worms that determined people can deal with, but linux
is not, repeat NOT, something that I'd even consider for the half life
of a neutron in free space (11 seconds if anyone is wondering)
for what older HAMS call an "appliance operator"

Most people want to buy a computer, load the software applications they want to use and have the thing work like a telephone (old style Bell phone) toaster or referigerator.

Frankly if I WANTED to spend time screwing with a system to make it work.... Naaa...

I want to turn the damned thing on check my e-mail and ebay auctions, answer a few questions here and then play a game or two.

TRUST ME I spend WAY too much time setting up or restoring systems for other people
to enjoy struggling with making things work.

Explaining to anyone else how to make a linux system work? Uhhhh... No.

Linus is simply "not ready for prime time", most people simply can't deal with it.

Me? I just don't want to.



Now with Jim trying to run the "Restoration" discs and getting a grey screen?

Software? when he is booting off the CD-Rom? No.

that's hardware. personally I'd bet that the HDD bit the dust.

Remember Most notebook manufacurers use lowest bidder Hitachi or Toshiba drives.


the easiest computers to get running after a HDD crash or a failure just short of it?

Dell or HP

The most frustrating? the Fujitsu-Siemens Stylistic Tablet computer that's been fighting me for nearly three weeks, on and off... (it has surpassed my old Gateway in invested frustration)

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[Will]

I think the laptop drives fail so frequently because of heat. People want desktop power in a tiny little box. All of my laptops suffered fairly frequent failures--the three F's in laptops. This Acer Aspire I bought last year with the Atom processor doesn't get hot at all.

 

[btm757]

Shoulda got a Mac

 

[PaleBlue90]

Shoulda got a Mac

while i love macs, i recently just had mine crash. all of them do it. its all out personal prefrence

 

[Will]

I bought a Mac a couple of years ago. My Okidata laser printer turned out not to work with it, it won't run any of my neccesary software, or any of the kids learning software and when you are used to Windows, OSX is frustrating and clunky. Nobody uses the thing--it just sits there. Hell, people will get on the ancient Dell T450 before they get near the Mac. I'm sure the Mac is a lovely machine but it doesn't seem like it.

 

[Ranger Kip]

Mac = FAIL, sorry but true, we are of a different species XD haha

 

[Legend]

I agree completely with AllanD's assessment of the situation.

Since most crashes and data loss are far enough apart for people to forget the pain, they fail to back up and don't maintain an image of their system. So when something bad happens they can spend 4 or 5 frustrating days trying to recover and get their system back up, then spend a couple of days reformatting, reloading and updating all their applications and restoring any data they do happen to have backed up. -OR- they can just go straight to the reformat, reload point. The only difference between the two approaches is the 4 or 5 frustrating days of trying to recover that actually works about 1 time out of 100.