Help! My computer crashed...

jhelanee · 07-16-2007, 08:34 PM

My main desktop computer crashed last night and I haven't been able to get it back up and running.

It's older (almost 6 years) and runs Windows ME. I was originally able to get it running in safe mode, so I tried disabling all of the McCafee stuff that runs at startup, but that didn't work. Then I tried running a thorough ScanDisk scan in safe mode but it hung in the middle of doing that. I even got out my startup disk and tried restoring the registy to before the crash and running ScanDisk after booting with that, but it hung there too. And now it won't even boot into safe mode.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I obviously have another computer that I can use, but the one that crashed has all my e-mail, contacts, favorites and files (of which about 95% of the files but none of the rest is backed up) so I really want to get it running again.

Knitting_Guy · 07-17-2007, 02:03 AM

If the disk scan is hanging there is a good chance, especially with the unit's age, that the hard drive has gone south on you.

Hard drives have a typical life span of about 5 years, so that's a strong possibility.

I'm assuming you didn't do any backups of your critical data? Bad, bad.

A skilled technician may be able to recover all or most of your data from the drive, for a price of course. If the machine you're using has an open drive slot you could try installing the drive from the old machine in it as a slave drive and see if it can be read at all. That should let you know for sure if the drive is bad or if it's some other problem.

07-17-2007, 04:23 AM

Windows ME. oy.

I had that a few years ago, too. When my computer did what you're describing, I bought a new one loaded with XP and slid the old drive into an open slot of the new one. Everything was still there. Actually, a geek friend did it for me. That's probably your best bet with an ME, and you'll be glad you did it.

jhelanee · 07-17-2007, 04:31 AM

Originally Posted by Knitting_Guy

If the disk scan is hanging there is a good chance, especially with the unit's age, that the hard drive has gone south on you.

Hard drives have a typical life span of about 5 years, so that's a strong possibility.

That's sort of what I was thinking.

Almost all of my files are backed up, but for some reason I hadn't gotten around to doing the e-mail.

Originally Posted by zip

Windows ME. oy.

I had that a few years ago, too. When my computer did what you're describing, I bought a new one loaded with XP and slid the old drive into an open slot of the new one. Everything was still there. Actually, a geek friend did it for me. That's probably your best bet with an ME, and you'll be glad you did it.

I'm figuring that is the route I will have to go. I wasn't planning on buying a new computer quite so soon (especially since I have a newer laptop from grad school that I can use in the meantime) so maybe I will contact one of my computer geek friends to see if they can do data recovery for me.

Thank you both for the input!

07-17-2007, 05:08 AM

A data recovery will be tedious, but you know that. I bought only the tower and kept the same monitor, keyboard and mouse. If you go that route, then you can migrate your data to the new drive, format the old one and use it as your backup drive. Quick 'n easy fix. Cheaper than paying a geek, too. Unless they work for pizza and beer.

And providing that the old drive isn't completely fried.

ok, ok, I'll shut up now.