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HELP!! PC Data Files Backup... — Brooklynian

HELP!! PC Data Files Backup...

tuckpendleton
tuckpendleton
edited November -1 in Park Slope
Help! Need to find a reliable local computer technician to help recover files from my PC hard drive...would be great if it was local, but more than willing to travel into the city also.

Thanks so much...if it matters, it's a Dell PC, P4, XP...

(And please no snarky "Buy a Mac" comments. Thanks. :)

Comments

  • whyfi
    whyfi
    Just curious - what kind of a failure did you have?
  • tuckpendleton
    tuckpendleton
    Sorry -- shoulda been more specific.

    Windows XP crashed. After turning on the computer, I got the Dell welcome screen, the XP welcome screen, and then...nothing. Just a blank screen.

    After some hard re-boots, I got a screen of text "Sorry to inconvenience you, but Windows has unexpectedly failed to start" or something along those lines.

    I eventually got to a screen filled with filepath names ending in ".sys" but that's as far as I got.

    After restarting with last working settings, and in safe mode with no improvement, I called Dell, and after 90 minutes of diagnostics, they deteremined my hard drive was fine, the problem was XP and it needed to be re-installed, which would of course wipe out all my files.

    So once I get my files backed up, I can re-install....

    Hmmm. Perhaps a better title for this post would have been "PC data back up from hard drive..."
  • whyfi
    whyfi
    Ah - do you have a friend that can pop it (the hard drive) in to their PC? Or maybe you can buy a small drive and install XP on it leaving the data on your current drive intact?
  • jayce
    jayce
    You should be able to repair the XP install. Try booting off the install CD that Dell gave you and when it starts to install it should give you an option to repair. Try that first.
  • kaiserkai
    kaiserkai
    If you cant repair it get this :
    http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?pfp=cat3&product_code=312100&Pn=USB_2_0_3_5_inch_External_Hard_Drive_Enclosure

    Get your HDD out of your machine, plunk it into the enclosure and connect it to any other PC for backup.
    PM me and ill send you my phone # maybe I can walk you through on the phone if you have questions.
  • steve
    steve

    Subject: Re: HELP!! PC Data Files Backup...

    TuckPendleton wrote: Help! Need to find a reliable local computer technician to help recover files from my PC hard drive...would be great if it was local, but more than willing to travel into the city also.

    Thanks so much...if it matters, it's a Dell PC, P4, XP...

    (And please no snarky "Buy a Mac" comments. Thanks. :)
    I'm unfortunately unavailable, but as for anyone who got snarky about the mac thing, they would be wrong. Plenty of Mac users end up needing data recovery. OS X fails, drives have mechanical problems and so on. No user of any OS is exempt from this. I do a lot of data recovery on both platforms. All users should develop a backup plan.

    Anyone that wants some basic information about backing up is welcome to read either of these articles I have written.

    http://quickbyte.net/qgbackingup.html
    http://quickbyte.net/babypics.html
  • tuckpendleton
    tuckpendleton
    Thanks for the responses...the Dell tech did walk me through rebooting off the install CD, tried repairing, ran diagnostics on the motherboard, etc. I feel pretty confident that we exhausted all available options.

    (I will also say the Dell tech was pretty great. By far the best customer support experience I've had with them.)

    At the very least, it's time for an external hard drive so I can back up nightly, and should this happen again, I can re-format w/o having to worry about files...
  • tuckpendleton
    tuckpendleton
    BTW, also very much appreciate the cheaper DIY options/suggestions, and normally I would do those first...but there's many, many years of important files at stake, which why I want to take it to a pro...
  • rose
    rose
    TuckPendleton wrote: Thanks for the responses...the Dell tech did walk me through rebooting off the install CD, tried repairing, ran diagnostics on the motherboard, etc. I feel pretty confident that we exhausted all available options.

    (I will also say the Dell tech was pretty great. By far the best customer support experience I've had with them.)

    At the very least, it's time for an external hard drive so I can back up nightly, and should this happen again, I can re-format w/o having to worry about files...
    I've found that if Dell can't solve the problem in 15 minutes, they go right to the reinstall/wipe out your hard drive step. I just had this about a month ago -- they told me there was no other way to solve the problem. I said "no thanks" and hung up and eventually found a patch/update for the exact problem I was having on Dell's own website.

    I've had so many problems with my two Dells and I would never buy another one. I just bought my daughter a Mac, and when the other computers die, they are also going to be replaced by Macs. I know nothing is trouble-free, but ten minutes after taking the Mac out of the box, my 14-year-old had the thing up and running and she was IMing her friends. I was very impressed.
  • daniel
    daniel
    Tuck,

    I left you a private message. Let me know if you're interested.
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