CP: Computer just died

[Goldie]

Hi all,
Brigitte's laptop died today and it is our main computer with all email and adresses etc. on, so there is no access to this at the moment and also do not know when it can be repaired. Do not ask when she did the last back up.

If you need to contact us we have just set up a myspace page at www.myspace.com/overtonwhistles on Sunday and there is email possible or via PM here, but this is only as a last resort.

Not great a timing for the thing to die as she was in the middle of doing the taxes and deadline is Monday, technically.

Thanks
Colin

[Bloomfield]

Colin, Brigitte - very sorry to hear about your computer. Try to get the data rescued from the hard drive (unless the damage was a hard drive crash). If you've lost any mailing addresses, just sent those whistles to me.

Good luck!

[Goldie]

It sounds or better say there is no sound anymore when trying to turn on so if we are "lucky" it is the mainboard, the disk worked after problems started occuring. Hopefully in a couple of days we know more, need to contact Dell and they are shut since 6 just a few minutes before it happened.

As it happens, your address is lost, too so no can do on that side

Colin

[Adrian]

Bad luck mate! I hope you get the computer up and running soon as I need to order a new whistle soon.

[dwinterfield]

Last week I arrived in Dallas at a hotel and discovered there was nothing on the screen of my clunky Dell lap top. I had several lengthy conversations with two women in India. (I've always been okay with India service people and have worked through the language issues. No more language issues. These two women had excellent English.) They walked me through various routines to determine the dead looking computer was actually operating behind the black screeen. The result was that I returned home and the following day a guy showed up at my home when he said he would and replaced the entire screen under warranty.

Hopefully it will work out as well for you.

Good Luck

[Berti66]

sending off healing energies to computer.......
and blessings to you;)

berti

[Goldie]

Dell managed via telephone support to get us to get it working again yesterday. i had enough time to do a full data back up and then it died again during the diagnostic program. Tomorrow we hope it can be repaired with parts, hopefully after that it is stable again. I just am a little worried now that after the first part died there will be sooner than later the next parts giving in. I may not have worked it properly as I used it like a normal desktop for everyday business and most likely the working hours have been slightly longer than these are designed for. It is 5 years soon, is that old or not? I do not mean old technique, it did everything I wanted and would not need a faster or bigger one just meaning old in it is not designed to work for more than 5 years..... in the past HD had 5 years producers warranty but surely the ones in laptop are not made by the old seagate qualities anymore? Any experience ?

Brigitte (who run around like a tiger in its cage for the last two days)

[Denny]

five is old

Many businesses here try to retire them at three years.

[Pyroh]

Five years is rather old I´d say - most people I know switch laptops after two years or so. I hope my love (errr, my laptop) holds at least five years, for I sure don´t have the money for new one.

Anyway, good luck with solving these trouble.

[Berti66]

sweet tigger, sweet tigger, tigger hungry???
but on a more serious note:

what are you doing with such an piece of ANTIQUE??? hope it gets in working order again. tsss.

berti

[flutey1]

glad to hear you at least managed to back things up! (personal interest as I just ordered a whistle )

five is kinda old for a computer these days. I had one for 6 years before it got retired and it worked fine (and still works, though it gets unhappy about running big programs). your computer could remain workable but maybe backing up on an external hard drive daily would be a solution to prevent further mishaps? that would be my advice. and pet it and talk to it nicely, not quite as satisfying as kicking it, but seems to at least not have a detrimental effect...

cheers,
Sara

[MTGuru]

I'm waiting for good news from you before I answer your lovely, long e-mail from last week. So I hope your laptop gets well soon! My desktop is now 8 years old and still kicking ...

[arnie]

I'm waiting for good news from you before I answer your lovely, long e-mail from last week. So I hope your laptop gets well soon! My desktop is now 8 years old and still kicking ...

which brand and what is it made off MtGuru?

You choose for a nice neighbourhood where you can leave the door open. So nobody won't steal anything, eg. your computer. And what happens......
Hope it won't be too desastrous for your work, Colin.

[Brigitte]

Laptop works again, not 100% sure if the processor got harmed due to overheating, this is what time will show. When the technician had opened it I blushed, the ventilator had a "felt-look-alike-black cat hair's padding" around it which was so thick that it was slowed down which then on Monday after 15-20 hours running time in one go overheated it.... something I would have never thought could happen so badly. When I blushed the guy said, that it is normal especially if you have pets and that he has seen much worse....

While that is is now sorted since yesterday afternoon I found that the other computer I used as a storage place and which I tried get running on Thursday also is not functioning properly, using it just to store data on it in a network occassionally did not show the problems it has. I am not going to repair this one, it is THE one which is annoying and letting us down in the last 9 years on a regular basis, that is why I got the Laptop in the end, to have something reliable.... so this one will be replaced as soon as we can by a smal working PC, nothing fancy... everything on the market today compared with this old one is a superduper-racing-computer anyways so ....

As I had nothing to do but trying to get computers running and data secured I managed in a careless moment to infect Colin's computer with a malware, so now constantly security warning windows pop up and tell him to go somewhere to download security software to "get rid of the stuff which is popping up" which I am pretty sure was initiated by the companies themselfs to get business.... I will make sure that the companies Safenaweb dot com as well as Nous Tech Solutions Ltd. never get business from me, as it is their products I am asked to buy.... I prefer to bite my butt than giving them any penny.... If there is any simple solution to get rid of these I would be happy to know. I am afraid I have to do it via safe mode and change registry and things.... last time I had to do something like this I was always shortly to pass out of fear to destroy something.... any short tip and especially easy tip in a PM would be much appreciated. I tried yesterday with different spywarefighter programs, unfortunately they only show me that they are there (I can see them all the time popping up anyway so that is not new to me) but they cannot delete them, only if I pay the full license and I am not willing to buy this software in any way or form while I am totally angry about having the problem in the first place. Colin's PC is still Windows2000...

Yep, Aller guten Dinge sind 3, All things come in threes.... I really had them this week.....

Now back to tax paper work...

Wishing you all a nice weekend!!!
Brigitte

[jemtheflute]

Brigitte, I use Lavasoft Ad-aware SE Personal - the freeware version - on advice of my brother who is a school IT tech - I just run its scan function about every ten days or so and quarantine any nasties it finds such as tracking cookies. You have to buy an upgrade if you want on-access protection, but I haven't had any problem so far, touch wood! So far my Zonealarm firewall and AVG anti-virus freeware have kept my computer healthy, so far as I can tell. I'm using a gifted 2nd hand desktop with Pentium III processor on Windows 2000. (Almost as antique as me!) The Google toolbar offers a degree of pop-up blocking.

All that said, I'm pretty much a computer newbie and don't know much about it! Just saying that these particular programmes which were recommended to me seem to be sufficing for my needs.