FUCK FUCK FUCK aka massive computer problem/please help

What version of Windows? Where abouts were your files?

Most likely if the PC still boots in some form then your files are
recoverable, probably in another user account somewhere if it comes to it you take the HDD somewhere and they'll put it in another machine and copy your files off.

If it's XP try pressing f8 when it's starting up and selecting boot from last known working configuration.

If you get it running you'll need to run anti spyware/virus stuff ASAP.

Post as much info about your PC setup as you can.

Does this bring anything up?

xpost - phew, people who know more than I do about this

how do I take my hard drive to another computer? What is dos?

My guess some piece of spyware is causing explorer.exe to crash, which is why you have no start menu etc as that is just explorer.exe running as the shell.

Okay what kind of files are on the PC and how big are they, are we talking a few word docs or thousands of mp3s/videos.

Do you have a CD-RW, USB Key or any other writable removeable storage?

God it's a while since i've done 98 and this is from memory.

cd-rw - ??? - I have a cd burner, and many cd-rs. I don't know what cd-rw is.

usb key - I don't know what this is either. the computer has a USB port but I don't use it, and my housemate has the USB cable in his room somewhere.

re: task manager - I can't even get into it. when the computer boots there is literally nothing on the screen.

I'll try dos though I wouldn't know where to start with it...

"when I press Ctrl+Alt+Del there are no programs running at all when it turns on"

There's a menu here where you can do file/run and run programs using this we may be able to restore enough functionality to get stuff off/working again but I need to know whether it's working and exactly how fucked explorer is, there are other things we can do here such as run msconfig and remove nasty programmes, run other stuff like the legacy winfile etc.

There are 2 options here get the machine working again or get the files off then reinstall windows.

If I had direct access to the machine I could do either most likely, my advice to you is seek out a geek if thats impossible we'll soldier on.

if so.. you probably need to just reinstall windows.

I can't see any menu when I press Ctrl Alt Del, just the box where normally everythhing which is running is listed. nothing is running, and the only buttons are End Task, Shut Down and Cancel.

is it possible that I have actually deleted everything on my computer? Because after the lyrics site fucked things up the first time (it installed something called 180search assistant) I went to Add/Remove Programs and uninstalled all the dodgy ones which weren't there before - there was one called SideBar? (or something - SideSomething), and when I uninstalled that everything kind of disappeared.

after typing DIR lots of stff came up - it says 14 file(s) and 15 dir(s), is this a good sign?? what do I type now?

Your not going to be able to do a whole lot with them but at least you'll know they're still there.

how do I know what all the directory names are? cd (program name) doesn't seem to work.

also, what do I do now?

(thanks everyone for your help so far btw, much appreciated)

You won't be able to open most files because you can't run the programs they run on, eg Word, in DOS.

Navigate to the directory with your word docs in it and then type copy followed by the doc name then a: For example
copy docname.doc a:

ken if I reinstall windows does that mean I should retrieve all the files beforehand? or will they be there after I reinstall? I'm not coming to FT unfortunately but I can email someone my address and pay for postage if necessary...

also - once I get a windows 98 cd is it really obvious how to reinstall without buggering everything up? or shall I get someone over to make sure everything goes OK (ken???)

To reinstall, you just switch the computer on with the CD in the CD drive (although you might have to alter the settings to get it to look at the CD drive before the hard disk)

This may be caused by a virus, but I think it could also be caused by a hard disk failure. In the latter case, reinstalling may not get you far; and depending on the virus, it may only temporarily fix the former case.

Main point: you have almost certainly not lost what data you have there, with any luck at all. That can be recovered. I'm not certain whether your computer can be.

Dude its not Final Fantasy 7

Sorting problems like this across the web makes me frustrated if I was there I could sort it in 30 mins or so.

WAIT!

If you have saved your files in the My Documents folder, there's a very good chance that just reinstalling Windows will wipe out all of your files! If you saved them in another directory you should be fine, but if you save them automatically into the My Documents folder, find a way to move them first. You can do that by creating a directory at the C: level from the command line:

mkdir c:\recovered

Then you'll have to find the original files you want to save in the My Documents folder, and copy them to the new directory. You can probably do this by cd'ing (change directory) to the My Documents dir and when you're there, typing "copy *.* c:\recovered". (It's been a while since I've dealt with Win98, so I'm a bit rusty.)

I CAN LEAD YOU THROUGH THE KERNEL DISPLACEMENT RECOVERY PROCESS

wouldn't the easiest way to recover to have someone plug their disk into his computer?

also - isn't there someway to start taskman.exe? Maybe control escape?

(I don't know anything about cutting hair btw)

A really really horrible hack that might be worth trying:

Boot into DOS
Edit the file C:\WINDOWS\WIN.INI
Change the line 'run=' to 'run=PROGMAN.EXE' (without the quotes)
Reboot!
*Hopefully* this will make it fire up the old Win3.1 Program Manager when it boots, which at least gives you a "Run..." menu item that you can use to start programs and so on.

is the startup group processed by explorer.exe?

I'm afraid I don't actually understand anything in this sentence :(

(thanks everyone for the help btw, it really is appreciated)

ok i have a really fucking mysterious and super annoying computer (mac) problem

so i've been working on a project in final cut for the last few weeks

today i go to open it—by clicking on the project name in the "recently opened" menu

it doesnt open for some reason. weird!

so i go to look for the file itself in the folder where i left it (on an external HD)...

it's GONE.

the file has just... disappeared.

it's not in the trash. spotlight can't find it anywhere.

perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, NONE of the autosaves will open—assuming they're all corrupt.

i've NEVER encountered this before—a file just going missing.

help.

please help.

oh ya btw deadline is tomorrow :)

halp

Versions help?

currently googling to see if there's any good process for this, most of what I'm finding says "use ls -ai from a Terminal window to see if the files are really gone" which doesn't do much to explain why this would happen in the first place

can you navigate to the external drive without problem?

is that an app?

currently googling to see if there's any good process for this, most of what I'm finding says "use ls -ai from a Terminal window to see if the files are really gone" which doesn't do much to explain why this would happen in the first place

can you navigate to the external drive without problem?

― OH MY GOD HE'S OOGLY (DJP), Thursday, August 15, 2013 10:50 AM (19 seconds ago) Bookmark

yes i can!

can you explain how to use that terminal command? right now, i'd like to find the file, then figure out why it happened later

Terminal is an app, it's the command line for your machine

but yeah, the drive is otherwise (touch wood) working normally

Terminal is an app, it's the command line for your machine

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Thursday, August 15, 2013 10:51 AM (15 seconds ago) Bookmark

i know—i was asking about the "Versions help?" question

idk about this at all and don't use a mac, but googling has some ideas about downloading an app to view hidden files or booting into safe mode and looking in the root directory for 'previous versions'.

open it, type

cd "/Name of Your External Hard Drive"

and see if that works. if so, navigate to the right folder by typing

cd FOlder/Folder/etc

and then typing ls -ai to list the files in that folder

i've turned hidden files on but revealed nothing :/

do you use Time Machine? if so just rewind to an earlier time?

cd "/Name of Your External Hard Drive"

this didn't work but it also didn't work with any of my drives, is there a character missing here or something?

i stopped using time machine because it corrupted all my external HDs

i hate HDs :(

i dont know why i didnt do this already, but i'm ejecting my HDs and remounting them in hopes of a miracle

http://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/fcpx-bug-best-practices-for-using-external-hard-drives-and-final-cut-pro-x/

dunno if this is in any way helpful

"ls" is a command for listing the contents of a directory in Linux and -ai are options that modify its behavior ("a" prints out hidden files, "i" includes the OS index number for the file, which helps the OS keep track of its files and directories; more info on options can be found here: http://linux.about.com/od/commands/l/blcmdl1_ls.htm)

from now i'm keeping all my project files in dropbox, i'll tell you that much

HOLY SHIT

rebooting the HD... worked??!?!

what the hell happened there?!??!

ha figures

#1 rule of troubleshooting: first try a power cycle

i know you're always supposed to do that but it never ~actually~ works

that's on par with like, smacking the machine

thanks tho guys

rah

running diskwarrior now

feeling a bit like television's dr house today :)

you may want to check out that "best practices" link anyway for future reference

Burn that file to a dvd first

xxp

ya that's handy thanks!

i really wish time machine worked for me, but it has borked multiple drives

from now on in addition to keeping everything duplicated across multiple drives (media files), i'm gonna keep the project files themselves (generally around a few MB) in a dropbox folder on my internal HD so they're insta-backed up and versionable

anything mission-crit i keep in my dropbox

i would pay dropbox all the moneys if i could.... best app ever

ya, i usually do keep everything there but sometimes FCP projects end up outside of it... NOT ANYMORE PAL

btw, similar tip, started using everpix last week and LOVE it, have you tried that shit

sorry, should probably have been:

cd "/Volumes/Name of Your External Hard Drive"

but that is moot now. whew @ your happy result!!

versions is that thing that archives old versions of files, was thinking that maybe your "corrupted" backups might be recoverable that way

always love to see these things having a happy ending

everpix sounds cool i will give it a try xp

ya it's sort of calmed my digital photo anxiety. i had literally thousands on multiple hard drives, online photo services, my phone, various versions of iphoto and lightroom, and it just found them all instantly and dealt with them, even got rid of dups

i can browse 10 years of my photos on my phone, too, which is sick

there's something very affecting abotu seeing all your photos, from all different kinds of cameras and phoens and whatever, arranged all in order

sexy photoes

everpix sounds p great tbh

"The User Profile Service failed the logon. User profile cannot be loaded."

system restore is ur friend.

performed my first-ever such on 28/12/2013

maybe thats what fuckin caused it otoh, idk