Depends on how you feel about spending money. Acronis True Image works great for full backups. You can download it directly from Acronis.com for $50 but if you don't mind waiting a few days before getting the product, save yourself some money and get it from Newegg instead for $30. That is the Retail version, but there is also the OEM version for $20, but unless you are on a tight budget, for $10 difference I would go with Retail as you usually have better support options if you ever need help with the software. I have no personal experience with this newest version, but I have the older version at work and it is very easy to use.






Interesting. Was there software installed with the drive? It is unusual (but not impossible. Usually when the drive has problems) for a drive to cause a computer to slow down like that. If it has software that you installed then that would make a lot more sense.

Yep - it has its own backup management software.

Ah ok then that makes perfect sense. See if there are any updates to the software that may fix it.

Any suggestions on an external hard drive enclosure? I currently have one (AMS Venus DS-2316).

I like this unit. It's never given me problems. But I'm thinking it would make sense to get something that supports IDE and SATA and at least up to 1TB for the future. Am I on the right track? And do I NEED a unit with an internal fan?

Thanks for your suggestions.

No specific suggestions, but I wouldn't be concerned with anything IDE. Its a dying technology. SATA is the way to go. If you want support for 1TB then make sure you get an enclosure for a 3.5inch drive and not a 2.5inch drive. It does not need an internal fan, but it does help to keep the heat down.

Thanks Rick. To utilize the extra 120 gig drive I have now I need IDE since it's an older drive. I noticed that some units can accomodate both IDE and SATA so I thought I'd go that route. Will definitely get a 3.5" enclosure.

By the way, still no issues with my computer. So it looks like Combofix did indeed fix it.

Glad no issues have popped up. Seems like you should be in the clear then. I didn't realize you had a drive laying around that was IDE, in that case sure get an enclosure that supports both. But as far as the future is concerned, its all about SATA. IDE is just about dead.

Looking at this one....

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16817729001

Hey Rick. A query, if I may. Last night I tried to install iTunes on my Acer laptop. (Vista, Home [I would imagine. It came loaded on the thing.]) I got an error message stating that my administrator did not give me permission to do that. There are only two profiles on the lappy and mine was the first. So far as I remember, they were both set up with administration rights. Unless I have deep-seeded psychological issues (which I'm not ruling out) my administrator has no problem with the install. Encourages it, in fact. Any idea why or what the fix might be?

As always, thanks a whole bunch.

Try right-clicking on the install icon and choosing "Run As Administrator"

If not, I believe you can check the properties of the shortcut and choose "Run As Administrator"

Rick?

I see no problems with that one. Looks like it will suit your needs just fine.











That's good advice. If that fails, you may need to temporarily turn off UAC, which can be done in the control panel under user accounts.

I'll try when I get home. Thanks a lot guys.

It seems my recovery discs have shit the bed. An error occured during the format, so now my drive is completely blank!

Sony wants $100 just to look at the computer. I tried to install an old XP disc, but it won't install because it doesn't recognize my 250 Gig HD. I googled he issue, but the fix was a little over my head.

Does anyone have any ideas as to how to get an OS back on to my PC? Sony just sells recovery discs, not the OS...the OS is stored on a patition, so a blank drive means recovery discs ae useless...will MS give me replacement? I have a valid key.

help

First off, have you tried booting from the Recovery disk? It should not have formatted all partitions, just the OS partition. It should not have touched the recovery partition. IF that fails.... XP does not recognize the drive because it is SATA and you would need to install a driver for it. It is easier than it sounds. You just need to find the model of the laptop and find the SATA driver for it and copy that driver to a floppy disk. Then with the floppy disk (most likely an external drive on a laptop) while XP install is booting, you will see an option to press F6 to install any third part RAID controllers. Press F6 and later it will prompt you to install the driver from the floppy. Then it should recognize the hard drive.

If all else fails, there are other ways to obtain a copy of Vista such as if a friend has a retail copy, you can borrow that cd and install. You would need to use his/her cd key and not the one on your laptop as OEM and retail are slightly different in how they activate. It may take a call to MS to get it activated but it should be no problem, just lie and tell them it is not installed on any other machines.

When I run the recovery discs an error occurs during formatting. When I try to power up the PC, it says OS NOT FOUND.

I tried to slipstream an install disc, but when I try to boot to the ISO I get the OS NOT FOUND again. I'm probably screwing up the ISO image. Can I just burn an ISO image (bootable) to a DVD or do I need special software?

I have the SATA drivers...would a thumb drive work? EDIT: Nope Thumb Drive won't work

No, unfortunately it will not work from any source other than a floppy. XP is so old that when it was written, floppies were still common so they figured that was the best way! Since you have the SATA driver and no floppy, then slipstream would definitely be my next suggestion but apparently you are one step ahead of me! What did you use to slipstream? nLite is probably the easiest and best way out there to get it done. When you have the finalized .iso file you don't need specialized software, but you need to tell whatever program you are using to burn an image, not just burn it as a data disc. To eliminate confusion, just use ImgBurn to make your life much easier. Once its installed, double click the .iso file and it should open ImgBurn and just click the burn button and it will do the rest. If when double clicking the iso it opens your other cd burning program then just close that and open imgburn from the start menu and click the "write image file to disc button" and then choose the .iso file.

The slipstream worked...but my XP Disc is an upgrade! ARGH

Im off to see if this can be overcome...unless you some ideas rick

You don't happen to have an old win98 cd laying around do you? or know someone who does? all you need for the XP upgrade is to throw the win98(or even win95) cd in the drive during the XP install at the point where it checks for an old version. It doesn't need to be installed on the machine to do the upgrade.

No, I don't...honestly I figured by now someone figured out how to spoof a 98 disc, but a google search came up empty. Guess I'm assed out. Equally frustrating, I've read that the same upgrade rules do not apply to Vista...you cannot do a clean install of Vista with just an XP disc, XP has to be installed.


Damn

Vista is a bit weird, yes XP needs to be installed, but if you do not have it, you can install Vista without entering a CD key(thus negating the need to have a prior version), and then "upgrade" from vista to vista. So basically it needs to be installed twice. Very annoying.

Everything had been fine for about a week - Microsoft pushed updates last night, and now I'm back to the same problem.

Update: Using ProcessExplorer, I went through and started shutting down svchost.exe calls that were eating the most CPU resources. Surprise, surprise - it's my fucking HP printer that's causing the problems.

Love the printer, HATE HP's shitty software.

Do you use all the features of the software? Or do you just use it to print? If you don't use any of the fluff, you don't need to install it. You can install the driver only and it will be able to print.

Checking in from Las Vegas with a question that my family will be pissed I'm even asking as I should be nowhere near a computer...

I have my home network set up to forward port 3389 to my personal computer so I can remote desktop in. From my room in the Monte Carlo I can't reach my home machine. The way I see it, either port 3389 is blocked here (which they say isn't the case) or something is wrong at home (I've confirmed that machine can access the Internet but the person I had checking isn't all that computer savvy so I wasn't about to have her checking my router config but I know it all worked about 36 hours ago).

Is there any way I can test which end the issue is at?

Thanks.

It is possible the router just needs to be rebooted. I find that is a common occurrence. Do you have a static IP at home? Or dyndns or other to keep track of the IP? It is possible your address has changed. The user checking it can just go to the internet and go to www.whatismyip.com and read off the number to you. You can also run a Sheilds Up test from https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2 on your home machine to see if the port is open or not.

I confirmed that the IP is what I expected it to be. I also confirmed that I can RDC from where I am (VPN'd into the office and connected to one of our servers there) so it's not the network here. I'll have our router restarted next time someone's at the house and see how that works. It's a brand new router, just got it on Sunday, it'd suck to be having issues so soon.

Thanks.

Is the local IP of the machine at home static? That could have changed so the port is not being forwarded to the right machine. Also, may sound like a dumb question, but when you entered in the port forwarding info, did you click to enable it? I know some routers (Linksys especially) you need to click the check box to enable the rule, not just enter the info into it.

I mentioned in the "I Hate" thread that my computer crapped out on me yesterday. I can only browse the interwebs either at work (carefully) or on my phone. Which is starting to give me a headache. Talk about eyestrain. See, what ha' happin' was, I turned on the 'puter last night, I got the Dell start-up screen okay, but then I got BLUE SCREEN! I did what was suggested, tried to start in Safe Mode (all options), nothing. Tried to start it using the last known good configuration, nothing. Btw, the 'puter gave me this message:

PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA

So I called Dell tech support in New Delhi (Bombay? Mumbai?) for help (I was on the phone for almost the entire game and postgame). He talked me through a couple of tests, the last one where I attempted to run the Drivers and Utilities disk for previously installed Windows. Well, it failed test, and to sum up, tech guy sez the OS memory is corrupted and it can't be repaired this time, it will have to be reinstalled. He said I have to back up all my files before that's done, of course. A couple of questions; first, what service should I look to do this and how much should I expect to pay? Second, why can't it be repaired? I had trhe back up disks from when a similar problem happened just over a year ago. And I was able to reboot (with Dell's help) without losing a single file.

Btw, the last thing that happened when my computer worked was that it auto-installed 16 (count 'em!) Windows updates the night before. They auto-installed and then the computer automatically shut down. That's it.

This sound EERILY familiar to the problem I had. You do the right thing, make a recovery disc and the whole thing shits the bed.

I will be buying an external HDD and making incremental backups weekly. I know, I know I shouild've been doing that anyway and THAT'S not Windows' fault, but you kinda expect a HDD failure, not an OS failure.

The IP is relatively static. Technically Comcast doesn't give out static IPs but they don't regularly change them either. I confirmed that the IP hadn't changed and the port forwarding was working last time I tried it. My sister-in-law hasn't made it out to the house to check on our cats yet today so I haven't had the router restarted. If it's anything more than that, she won't be able to help me anyway so I'll just be out of luck until I can check it myself in a few days.

I cannot get the headset that I use on my computer working. When I use the headset to do phone calls, I can hear people fine, but they cannot hear me. When I went to see if it is plugged in correctly, I noticed that the one plug is real loose compared to the other. Is this connector on the motherboard or on another board and is this real easy to fix or do I have to replace the board?

It's most likely the microphone jack that's loose. It could be a motherboard connector if you're using onboard sound, or it could be a seperate soundcard. I don't know about fixing it, but worse comes to worse you could just get a USB headset instead of replacing the whole motherboard. Something like this one by Logitech for example.

Thanks Zaylenz. I didn't know that they had that type of headset. Much appreciated.

Hi Lisa sorry for taking so long to get back to you, was a hectic day at work. Page fault in non paged area is typically a driver problem. Something could have gotten corrupt. They dell guy is likely correct (shocking!) that your best course is to just backup the data and reload. There are some complicated recovery console commands you could try to revive it, but chances are you would be just wasting your time as it is very unlikely to work.

As far as backing up files, don't look for a service to do it as they will only rip you off. Either do it yourself, or take a trip up to Westchester and I will do it for you. How computer literate are you? It is fairly simple to do. All you need is a boot cd which I can provide for you, and an external hard drive. If you don't have one, you can even borrow from a friend. If you do not have access to an external drive and do not wish to purchase one, you can do it by burning the data to a blank CD. That's a good method if you don't have a lot of data, but if you have tons it can be a bit annoying burning multiple CDs.

As far as last time and restoring the machine without losing the data, you may have done a repair install of Windows. That will install Windows without touching the user data so it should all still be in place. It isn't a bad course to try, but I would recommend backing up your data first anyway to be safe.

As Zaylenz said, it could either be on the motherboard or on a separate card depending on your setup. A USB (or even bluetooth if you want to go wireless) headset is the easiest option. You could try and repair the microphone jack if you are handy with a soldering iron though, but it can be risky.

And if you need an external drive, they've got them pretty cheap at Costco now if you're a member.

And with their return policy, buy it, use it, return it!

Follow-up... Somehow Windows Firewall got turned on and was set to block RDC. Easy fix now that I'm in front of the computer but not so much from a few thousand miles away.

That figures. It's always something stupid.

Anyone have suggestions to clean up their PC? I use Crap Cleaner and have Norton 360 (ugh) running. Should I also be using Ad Aware and/or Spybot? Any alternatives?

What do you mean by clean up? Free up disk space or protect it from bullshit?

Microsoft released a free virus scan/defender a couple weeks ago and it's quite awesome: http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/

I'd like to do both, sir. Free up space and protect the bullshit.

Then you're gold with Crap Cleaner and MS Security Essentials. Just disable/close your Norton anti-virus before installing the MS one. You might even want to uninstall it since the MS one is better, but that's at your discretion.

If you want to clean out more space then try this, WinDirStat: http://windirstat.info/

It scans your drive and lists how big each folder is so you can see where all the space is being used. For instance, in your case what will probably happen is you saying, "I have 23 gigabytes in my furry porn folder?! That could use some housecleaning!"

Interesting. My Norton expires in 30 days. Do I even bother renewing? How can Microsoft offer this fo free?

And my furry porn folder only has 11 gigabytes, thank you very much.

Just exit out of your Norton now, install the MS one and try it out. They won't work well together at the same time, if at all. If you like the MS one then uninstall the Norton so it doesn't start up again when you turn your computer on next time. MS offers it for free for goodwill and good PR. It's not like they need the money.

Okay, I'll try it. But I'm skeptical because Microsoft does nothing for free. Nothing, I tell you!

27" iMac.

Want.

Sorry for the delay. A lot of shit going on for me this week.


Listen to Pete. MS Security Essentials is a new thing they just recently released and initial impressions it seems excellent. Norton is a steaming pile of turds in my opinion. Uninstall it promptly and then install a free alternative. MS is a good all in one option. I also like AVG. Lots of good programs are offered for free and are equal if not better than their paid alternatives. But definitely do not have both on there at once. That is asking for trouble. Download the MS one. Remove Norton. Then immediately install the MS one.


Also it is a good idea to download and install Malwarebytes and run it monthly. I'm not a huge fan of CCleaner. It's not bad but I find it can be a bit aggressive sometimes. If you need to use an automated cleaner, I prefer ATF Cleaner.

Mac snob.