MPnet geek support

[T3ngu]

One of those things its easier to like as a hobby than as a job.

I'll take your words of wisdom on board TheKiwi.

[TheKiwi]

Nothing hurts more than loosing all your data. Just think how bad it would be to loose all those emails from your lover, those photos of your kids back when they were cute, or that tenticle **** you spent 10 years collecting.

Back your data up regularly. External USB hard drives are pretty cheap these days and make it easy, not like the bad old days of 50 floppy disks or (worse) zip disks.

Sadly, the Home Ed of Windows XP doesn't come with the very useful ntbackup program loaded by default. If you want to add it, follow the instructions here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/u..._03july14.mspx

If you make a habit of this, the day your computer's hard drive makes that ominous clicking sound, or having your laptop "borrowed" from the back seat of your car won't be nearly as painful. Even if you don't know how to get your data back, having this will make life so much easier for the person who does.

[T3ngu]

Nothing hurts more than loosing all your data. Just think how bad it would be to loose all those emails from your lover, those photos of your kids back when they were cute, or that tenticle **** you spent 10 years collecting.

Back your data up regularly. External USB hard drives are pretty cheap these days and make it easy, not like the bad old days of 50 floppy disks or (worse) zip disks.

Sadly, the Home Ed of Windows XP doesn't come with the very useful ntbackup program loaded by default. If you want to add it, follow the instructions here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/u..._03july14.mspx

If you make a habit of this, the day your computer's hard drive makes that ominous clicking sound, or having your laptop "borrowed" from the back seat of your car won't be nearly as painful. Even if you don't know how to get your data back, having this will make life so much easier for the person who does.

Excellent point Kiwi.

I have a 300gb external drive and run Win XP Pro. I use NTbackup and backup to the drive every so often. It takes a while over wireless but it gets there. Even if its something as simple as a registry issue, you can fix it!

[beer_garden]

That clicking noise is like the red ring of death on the xbox 360. No software will fix it. You may be able to get it to work click-free once in a while but eventually it will die out. Better copy your data during those times. Happened to me once on an old computer (was also a Seagate HD).

[silentpartner]

Ok I have a 160GB External hard drive. I turned it on and nothing happened. The light was on and it just kept clicking the same pattern over and over. Then (this was on my Windows XP Comp) an error came up "Data Error (cyclic redundancy check)."

I don't know what that means. So wondering what would happen I tried it on my new iMac and Disk Utility came up. But it didn't recognize it.

How can I bring this drive back to life. I really don't want to lose all of the stuff on it. Many of the things on it are for college and still need to be accessed.

Any help?

P.S. scanned it for viruses, adware and spyware and came up with nothing.

If I read your post right, you wish to primarily recover data on your hard drive and not actually fix the drive itself. The two, if done in the wrong order, are rarely compatible. Information first, drive second.

A rule of thumb is that hard drives are cheap. Yours is no longer trustworthy and even if you fix it, I wouldn’t trust it with anything that can’t be lost a few more times.

Your data is probably recoverable, although to what degree depends on what you have done with your hard drive since you discovered that it wouldn’t run properly. DO NOT run Check Disk (CHKDSK) on it, yet, as Check Disk will try to “fix” your drive without a care for the data you have stored on it (i.e. while it might manage to solve the problem with your drive, your information will be lost).

To recover your data you need to have access to a computer that works fine and recovery software like Runtime’s Get Data Back (http://www.runtime.org/gdb.htm - NOTE: Be sure to check if the damaged drive uses FAT or NTFS when selecting the applicable version).

Connect the damaged drive to the computer (it’s ok if the computer can’t read from it). Install the software anywhere on the working computer (not on the damaged drive). When installed and running, it’ll show you a list of the drives detected. Select the damaged drive and let it work its magic (for 160 GB it should only take a few hours to reconstruct). Be sure to have another drive (enough free space somewhere else) onto which you can back-up any files you want to recover. Do not over-exert the damaged drive during recovery by selecting the root and simply moving it to a new destination for recovery; instead, do it subfolder by subfolder and naturally, pick what you want the most, first. Reconstruction/recovery takes a while, so a quick look at the linked website’s FAQ might answer any questions that come to mind.

I have used Get Data Back on six different hard drives and if it can be recovered, Get Data Back will recover it. So for what it’s worth, I recommend it highly.

Once you have the information recovered, check to see whether you can send off for a new drive by checking the model/make on Seagate’s website, “Warranty and Returns” section under Support. If you can return it, do what is called a “zero fill” on the hard drive to remove any data you have on it (a few times for good measure, depending how paranoid you feel) and then ship it off. Seagate has information on how to do this on their website. Search for “zero fill” on Seagate’s website and then choose which option is right for you.

Do not, however, trust any temporary fixes. Even if CHKDSK should be able to mark off corrupted areas, it’s more often than not just a highly temporary fix (especially if it audibly “clicks”). Some hard drives seem to last forever while others break down after only a few months. All depends on make/model/conditions/use/luck but once it starts to have problems, replace it.

Good luck..

PS: If you use either XP or Vista then the following link will provide an excellent reference guide to getting the most out of your OS (http://www.tweakguides.com/TGTC.html).

[T3ngu]

Excellent, thanks Silentpartner. Im glad this thread is stickied.

[TheKiwi]

My IT thought of the day. Laptops = thief magnets.

My work got broken into over the weekend and around a dozen laptops got pinched. Laptops are a target because they're valuable and portable. Pretty much the ideal crim target at the moment. Leaving them on your desk (if your desk can be seen from the street), or in the back of your car is just asking for trouble.

[Curtis E. Bear]

Problem with firefox.

For the past 2-3 hours it's been playing up. Everytime I start it, the browser loads with two tabs that say "Loading" and the screen just stays white. I have to Ctrl+Alt+Del to exit. I've reinstalled it but it's still the same.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

[Elemental666]

Problem with firefox.

For the past 2-3 it's been playing up. Everytime I start it, the browser loads with two tabs that say "Loading" and the screen just stays white. I have to Ctrl+Alt+Del to exit. I've reinstalled it but it's still the same.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

I had the same problem long time ago, download this:

http://www.ccleaner.com/

Run the cleaner, and clean the registry with it as well.

[silentpartner]

Problem with firefox.

For the past 2-3 it's been playing up. Everytime I start it, the browser loads with two tabs that say "Loading" and the screen just stays white. I have to Ctrl+Alt+Del to exit. I've reinstalled it but it's still the same.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

I’d hazard a guess that your firewall is blocking Firefox.

Probably as a result of some recent update that made your firewall ask for permissions which might have been denied or incorrectly applied. This might explain the problem still existing after subsequent re-installs (if you aren't changing installation directory/paths). An indicator of this would be if you could use IE to browse on the same computer but Firefox doesn’t seem to want to work.

[Curtis E. Bear]

I'm using IE now and it's fine. I'll disable my firewall and see if that fixes the problem. I'll also download ccleaner and give that a go.

Edit - Ran ccleaner and everything is fixed. Thanks guys.

[jklv]

I have the same probem with firefox. Well not actually the same, It begun happening just now, I clicked it but it did not open, only the computer got so damn slow which never happens. Then I shut it down and firefox opened and there was a message saying somethinhg like missing google bookmarks. I am now downloading it ccleaner d=
Thanks guys I knew you had an answer.

[jklv]

OK I re downloaded google toolbar for firefox and I get this as Curtis E. Bear said:

[jklv]

Ok I runned crap cleaner and everything is back to normal

[jklv]

I now have this problem:
http://img522.imageshack.us/img522/5243/weirdnoddo9.jpg
If I say yes or no, it does not matter, it pops out again in 5 seconds