What to do when your comp poops on you.

[JPS]

anyways, I was installing a new audio device driver for the comp, and for no apparent reason it shuts down and restart, halfway through the restart, it shut down and restarted again, and kept doing that.

I can get into diagnostic mode but theres no way I can delete the driver, it just says theres a problem with it thats preventing the OS from starting up.

Does anyone know a way to delete/disable the driver through DOS? Or if using the System Restore to restore it to factory condition also delete all the personal files or replaces just all of the system files/registry?

WHAT I DID

This only works using Vista

I ended up reformating the drive, but I wasnt able to backup anything because I didnt have an external USB device big enough to hold 31 Gigs worth of stuff, so heres what I did in case any of you find yourself in this desperate situation(it took me 6 hours to figure this out)

1.At the MS-Dos prompt type in "DISKPART", it will open the MS-DOS Disk Partitioning software.

2.Type in "DETAIL DISK", note which disk # your OS is on.

3.Type "SELECT DISK=#, with # being the number you noted in step 2.

4.Type "SHRINK", this will unallocate as much space as possible to allow another drive to be partitioned(I think thats what it does)

5.Type "CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY SIZE=#####", this will create another drive partitioned from the first, the size is in MB, if you'd like the largest drive possible to be created simply do not include the SIZE statement.

6.Now your drive should be partitioned, type "DETAIL DISK" and note the LTR of the new drive.

7.Type EXIT to get out of DISKPART

8.At the MS-DOS prompt type "FDISK [new drive letter+:], example: FDISK E:

9.It will ask you to confirm the format, type "Y" and press enter.

10.After the drive is formatted, at the MS-DOS prompt type "REGEDIT"

11.It will come up with the Registry Editor, highlight "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE"

12.Select "File" and "Load Hive"

13.It will now come up with a window where you can navigate the hard drive, from here simple Cut/Paste all the personal files/folders from the Windows drive to the new drive you just partitioned.

14.After you get done exit out of everything and reformat the windows drive and reinstall the OS, when you get everything loaded simply retrieve all of your data from the new partitioned drive.

[Seraph]

Re: My comp pooped on me

That sucks. The same thing happened to me about 6 months ago. My son kept pushing the power button on the comp, and then it got stuck in a loop like you said. Eventually, after a few weeks of feeble attempts on my part to fix the problem, I managed to achieve a blue screen.

I took it to a computer store and let them have a look at it. They said it could easily be fixed, returned in two days to pick it up, got it home only to have it do the same thing over and over again. Brought it back, had it re-diagnosed, and had my HD upgraded from 20G to 40G and a new CDROM Drive installed because they further f'd up my computer. All for free.

Anyway, the problem was that my HD got chewed. I don't know this for certain but that's what they told me. You might have the same problem that I did. Then again, I'm sure someone here will have better advice.

[altoecko]

Re: My comp pooped on me

Perversion would be jealous.

[JPS]

Re: My comp pooped on me

I hope mine didnt get chewed because I have almost 2000 pictures of the kids on it from the last 3 years, I should have backed up the files before this happened.

I can back up the files but it asks for a USB device and I dont have any USB device big enough to hold all those pics

[Seraph]

Re: My comp pooped on me

Yeah we lost all our pics too. They were the only things we couldn't get back. Really sucked. We back up all our pics online now. I had a portable HD, but thats been missing for awhile.

I feel your pain. But keep hope alive JPS. I don't know anything about computers, so maybe you still have a chance to fix what I made worse.

[thetruecoolness]

Re: My comp pooped on me

Well you can get them back, but it will cost you. Data on a harddrive is really never gone (unless you write a random set of data over it around 7 or more times), but getting it back is not easy (unless you're the NSA). So while a bad hard drive can cause random crashes, so can very faulty drivers. As for uninstalling it I'm not sure what to tell you about that, because while you can delete the driver file, doesn't mean windows won't still look for it.

What I recommend is finding a friend with a full version of windows and try reinstalling completely, or try system restore from that disc (which unless you tell it to FORMAT will not delete the data on your drive).

If you have an external hard drive I would recommend trying a CD boot version of Linux and backing up your files to the external drive, then formatting and reinstalling.

If not, restoring to factory defaults "shouldn't" delete any of your personal data, but since I've never owned a manufactured computer I wouldn't know.

[Chad]

Re: My comp pooped on me

Try repairing your installation, too. If the driver only managed to mess up any Windows system files, repair will do its best to take care of them.

[JPS]

Re: My comp pooped on me

Repair said it cant fix whats wrong, and system restore has to reformat the drive(I checked it out online)

What I did(and hope it will work) was go through DOS and created a primary partition off of C drive thats 49GB, hopefully I can access the hive from regedit and transfer the files to E:...hopefully... my luck itll say WE CANT DO THAT LULZ!!!

If not Ill just go through DOS and move all the files(which all of my files are conveniently saved in only 2 folders), so its a simple MOVE command

Its formatting E right now, so I guess Ill see in a few minutes...

[JPS]

Re: My comp pooped on me

Sorry to 2x post

Now that I partitioned a E: drive from the C: drive I can safely reformat and restore C: without losing the files I moved to E: even though theyre both on the same drive right?

[Chad]

Re: My comp pooped on me

Why would system restore have to format the drive? Do you not have any restore points?

[JPS]

Re: My comp pooped on me

I dont know, I have plenty of restore points, but it says it was unable to for some reason

[Seraph]

Re: What to do when your comp poops on you.

Dun dun DUNNN! Same thing with my comp.
Sorry JPS.

EDIT: I'm not trying to **** you off or anything dude.

[JPS]

Re: What to do when your comp poops on you.

But I found a way to save all of my stuff without spending anything Look at my first post, might want to print it out and keep it somewhere just in case, I know I did

EDIT: nah youre fine, I got it fixed so Im happy now

[Chad]

Re: What to do when your comp poops on you.

Oh yeah, what you did is Vista specific, by the way. The partition shrinking is not in earlier version of Windows. However, you can get programs such as Partition Magic that achieve similar results. I can't attest to their effectiveness as I haven't used them, but they do exist.

[JPS]

Re: What to do when your comp poops on you.

does it run in dos? Because I couldnt load any windows programs at all except the basic stuff(calc, wordpad, notepad, etc..)