Computer Problems

[James Doulton]

So at 6pm on Boxing Day my laptop disk drive stopped working. It was working fine when it was shutdown but was completely dead when I tried to restart it to see what had been going on here. After getting very depressed I decided to just replace the drive rather than the whole computer because I was getting tempted into more and more expensive laptops.

So I took the opportunity to get a much bigger hybrid disk drive from Maplins - 1 Terabyte, with 8Gb of flash that they claim makes it as fast as a Solid State Drive (SSD). I also bought Windows 8 to go on it because I either didn't get a Windows 7 disk with my laptop or else I have lost it. Windows 8 will take a little time to get used to and it was a pity to have to upgrade as I was really happy with Win 7.

What was really depressing me was the worry that I might have lost a lot of data. I had done a proper full backup over a year ago and since then I had been using some incremental backup software on my network drive. While stewing overnight I had remembered that the backup software had been complaining about something, which I had intended to sort out after Christmas. So it was a real relief when my year old backup worked, restoring all of my kids pictures and videos.

I was disappointed that the incremental backup software would not restore the changes but I found out that it had been storing all of my file changes and it was pretty easy to just copy them back manually.

The things that I have lost are my email archive (I'm still hoping to resolve that) and all of my applications. I have receipts and passwords etc in my email archive, which is why it matters. I also can't get into my mail with the new client as I seem to have the wrong password (duh!). I expect that the applications needed reinstallation anyway because of changing Windows versions, but it is a nuisance hunting down all of the disks as I have moved house since I installed most of them - I can remember where I used to keep them in the old house but not where I put them when I moved!

So even though I take the whole backup business seriously, I have had a lot of work to get my system back to working and there are still a lot of other things to do to get back to where I was. Makes an engine change in a Dutton seem easy!

[Adrian Southgate]

James, worms, can ,open you have...

First thing, buying a 'caddy' for the old drive will cost about £8 and allow you to plug it into a USB port.

I assume you actually tested the old disk before removing it, not just relying on the fact that windows wouldn't load before calling it dead... :-)

I have windows disks of most flavours from windows 98se onwards and the company I work for do both refurb and retail laptops from about £100 upwards.

As to windows 8, ask Daryl!... Personally I find it ok on tablets and touch screen units but the metro interface is just crap and full of 'stuff' that most people will never use. You can get a 'shell' which will restore the functionality of windows 7 but whatever you do leave 8.1 alone unless you want more grief.

Some older software doesn't work at all in 8 or 8.1 and the overall feeling I get when using it at work is that it was designed for an xbox...

[James Doulton]

Yes, I tried putting the drive in a caddy and connecting it to my wife's laptop but I had no joy. It didn't even make the right sounds - it was buzzing rather than whirring and clunking. It took me quite a while to get over the denial stage where I couldn't believe that that it was really dead.

I don't understand Window 8, I don't understand what is going on with that start screen and I don't understand what has happened to the desktop. I don't get the paradigm, is there one?

Why get rid of the Start menu, and all of its sub-menus, and just splatter icons over the Start screen instead? Whereas an application used to create its own sub-menu with 4 or 5 items on it, now that is 4 or 5 icons in the Start screen. I have only reinstalled a few applications but already it is difficult to find the right icon to launch the program on the Start screen. As you say, maybe it was designed for the Xbox.

[Dave Adams]

windows is desperate to claim back some of the ground lost to Linux (Android) in the hand held market and i suspect it is some of the reason it got tied up with Nokia (a double irony as the Nokia Symbian O/S was the one that Sendo developed in partnership with microsoft and then went to court over....and that microsoft lost) was so windows could undoubtedly have had a stronger foot in the hand held market had it not tried some shady dealings (as highlighted apparently in the court case)  and got burnt.

Microsoft now seems to think that if it offers a fully integrated user platform that it will gain market share  from its large corporate PC market.......the thing is, the large gaudy buttons interface really doesn't do it for me or i suspect most folks beyond 5-8 years of age. it is however stuck with the touch screen interface and an ambition to integrate the platform so some quite horrible compromises have to be made. i personally don't think that a solely one size fits all platform is a great idea, and that a solely touch screen interface works for all desktop scenarios.........but then i don't have millions tied up in the PC business so what do i know.

[Adrian Southgate]

I think I agree with a lot of that Dave. I do know there are a lot of pc 'power users' that are very unhappy with both win8 and the metro interference, can't bring myself to call that mess an interface. We all know that windows have done good o/s - bad o/s for years, win 98 was good, millenium was awful, 2k was good, xp grew from that and was also good, then there's vista - awful and 7, again a good o/s and now we have 8. Its always the rushed ones that are dire.

I'm on linux on the laptop, gives me no problems, runs like a dream and is secure. This PC runs XP, the games/office machine is dual boot XP Pro and 7 pro 64bit and the security pc / media centre runs vista, now i've tweaked the crap out of it its been running for 5/6 years with very few issues but it took a lot of work to trim the fat off the o/s.

[James Doulton]

I can't stand all of this change for change sake. I was really happy with Windows 7.

I also like icons and screen features that have proper 3D edges to them with a bit of shading on the bottom edge etc. Nowadays they have all gone flat, with very childish simple colours. Apple did the same thing with the recent upgrade to the OS on my iPad and mow it just seems so childish. I don't think it is just that I am getting old as my kids and step kids all seem to dislike the  changes.

As for the new Win8 interface - you called it "Metro", Adrian, is that its official name? I can understand that a touch screen phone would not work with a Windows 7 desktop but why push a phone interface onto a mouse driven PC? That is just as inappropriate. I could see this being the beginning of the end for Microsoft, with companies moving to Red Hat Linux or similar.

[Adrian Southgate]

Red Hat is best suited to servers and firewalls, I ran a linux firewall for years, confused the hell out of BT as they could never interrogate the PC on the end of the broadband.

There are hundreds of linux distributions out there but I've tested a few and found them to be useful, reliable, stable and whats more important, not owned by microsoft.

Seriously, if anyone does have computer 'issues' then ask, I'll even start another thread called Ask Ade if needed, It is what I do to earn a crust after all.

[Steve and Matt Pegrum]

Whenever having a hard disc problem like this it could well be worth trying to boot the pc from its cd drive in case really the operating system that's messed up. That way you might be able to get the latest versions of your files back

[Steve and Matt Pegrum]

As to what to boot from, get yourself a Linux magazine. Most of them come with a bootable disc.

[Adrian Southgate]

Hello, my names Adrian and i'm a geek ...

Linux mint 12 DVD edition on a pendrive, put your old disk back in and boot from the pendrive. the disk utility will tell you exactly what's wrong with the hard disk. and if use-able will allow you to recover data onto another external disk.

Pendrive's are created using the universal usb installer which you can download HERE. Needs a 2Gb+ memory stick to work.

[alfie murie]

It takes all kinds to make this world Ade, thats why your making your fortune from non-geeks like me who was lost after the 2nd posting of this Blog  :o)))    as an IT man, I fail !!   that why I'm a damn good plumber !   pmsl

[Pete Clayton]

You might need a dual power usb cable for the caddy, I use a caddy quite a lot to plug different drives in some work fine on a single power cable some don't. I had one the other week that just buzzed before I swapped the cable.