My business computer has just took a dive and I don't have a recover disc
What exactly happened?
turned it on ........ and got the screen that looks like if you press the F1 or F2 when booting it up and its saying I need to install the recovery disc
So this was a pre-built computer, and you no longer have that disk?
How important is the data on the drive?
How important is the data on the drive?
yeah its a HP .......... very important - invoices, payroll, schedules for today, all of my media ( radio, tv commercials ) and scripts for the commericals
I got to get this thing up and running ASAP sinces its Friday and got payroll to do
I got to get this thing up and running ASAP sinces its Friday and got payroll to do
Call your company IT manager.
The idea of any hi-fi system is to reproduce the source material as faithfully as possible, and to deliberately add distortion to everything you hear (due to amplifier deficiencies) because it sounds 'nice' is simply not high fidelity. If that is what you want to hear then there is no problem with that, but by adding so much additional material (by way of harmonics and intermodulation) you have a tailored sound system, not a hi-fi. - Rod Elliot, ESP
I don't have much experience with factory recovery disks...if it were a normal XP system you would just put the windows disk in (any windows disk) and run the recovery tools to see if you could salvage the OS without reformatting. If you can't salvage the OS and since you do have important data on the machine you're going to need either buy disk recovery software yourself and try to get the data you need off of it before reformatting to put a new OS install on, or you need to go to some tech guru shop where they can try to salvage your data for you. The latter would probably be much faster.
I think he is his company.Freezer7Pro wrote:
Call your company IT manager.
if you can't find that recovery cd, or your IT people can't help, you can remove the hard drive and hook it up in another computer to pull the important data off.
yeah I wish I had some IT guy some I could put all this weight on him ........ but I'm up a creek without a paddle .... I wonder if there is somewhere where I can find Pro
First thing first - you need to get at the data that's on the HDD.
Do you do daily backups? Any backups at all?
If so, will last-nights back-up get you enough info to work with?
Then go with that.
Forget what's not working for the moment - find, beg or borrow another PC from somewhere to get that payroll done - that has to be your number one priority.
Now, if you don't do back-ups (and I'm getting the impression from you OP that you don't), then you're gonna still need to find a working PC, and you're gonna need to open up the broken one, take out the HDD, then open up the borrowed one, and connect up the HDD from the broken one as a secondary HDD - you'll then be able to boot into the working windows on the working PC and access the data on the broken-PC's HDD (which hopefully isn't fucked itself (if it is, bottom line is you've lost everything anyway)).
Once you've got your business up and running again, that's the time to figure out how, or even whether it's worth getting the broken PC running again.
And, finally, if, as I suspect, you don't do backups, then take this as a lesson learnt and, at the very least, do weekly if not daily backups in the future.
Do you do daily backups? Any backups at all?
If so, will last-nights back-up get you enough info to work with?
Then go with that.
Forget what's not working for the moment - find, beg or borrow another PC from somewhere to get that payroll done - that has to be your number one priority.
Now, if you don't do back-ups (and I'm getting the impression from you OP that you don't), then you're gonna still need to find a working PC, and you're gonna need to open up the broken one, take out the HDD, then open up the borrowed one, and connect up the HDD from the broken one as a secondary HDD - you'll then be able to boot into the working windows on the working PC and access the data on the broken-PC's HDD (which hopefully isn't fucked itself (if it is, bottom line is you've lost everything anyway)).
Once you've got your business up and running again, that's the time to figure out how, or even whether it's worth getting the broken PC running again.
And, finally, if, as I suspect, you don't do backups, then take this as a lesson learnt and, at the very least, do weekly if not daily backups in the future.
Last edited by Scorpion0x17 (2008-10-10 06:13:57)
if I take the route of hooking the HDD to another computer .... does it have to be Pro OS on the other computer
Does not matter.SEREMAKER wrote:
if I take the route of hooking the HDD to another computer .... does it have to be Pro OS on the other computer
main battle tank karthus medikopter 117 megamegapowershot gg
would I be able to a laptop vista
in a word noSEREMAKER wrote:
would I be able to a laptop vista
You need to be able to plug in the hard drive to the other computer, and you're going to need a desktop's power supply and motherboard connections to do that most likely.
need more detail.
Broken pc - desktop or laptop?
Available working pc - desktop or laptop?
You got cash? Near a GOOD computer bits store?
Broken pc - desktop or laptop?
Available working pc - desktop or laptop?
You got cash? Near a GOOD computer bits store?
If you have the correct adapter, yes. Like if you hook the drive up to a USB External Drive, then plug the USB into the laptop, yes it will work.SEREMAKER wrote:
would I be able to a laptop vista
I would suggest setting up some sort of backup when you do get to your data particularly if it is sensitive and very important information such as payroll. A usb HDD would suffice for you.
is the crashed drive IDE or SATA? if its sata, you can just hook it straight up to a desktop. if it's IDE, you need to buy this connector that adapts a 2.5 laptop ide to a 3.5 desktop ide. its cheap, and you can find it at circuit city or best buy. also, jamiet suggests a usb adapter, which you could also find at best buy, but it might be more expensive. once you have your hard drive hooked up to another destop, you just open 'my computer' and it be listed as the next available drive letter. then you can just copy your data straight over to the desktop's hard drive.
Last edited by steelie34 (2008-10-10 06:26:26)
Scorpion0x17 wrote:
need more detail.
Broken pc - desktop or laptop?Available working pc - desktop or laptop?desktopYou got cash? Near a GOOD computer bits store?personal laptopyeah and no, bestbuy is the closes
you could take it to the geek squad at best buy. but fair warning, don't let them do anything without you standing there and watching. they are sometimes complete fucktards, but they are probably your best bet at backing up your data and fixing the hard drive.
i would purchase a hard drive of the same size as the one in your desktop and have the geek squad clone your drive to it. this way you have an exact copy of your data if they fuck up.
i would purchase a hard drive of the same size as the one in your desktop and have the geek squad clone your drive to it. this way you have an exact copy of your data if they fuck up.
Last edited by steelie34 (2008-10-10 06:29:11)
Remember though, you will have to turn on the original broken PC and leave the power hooked up to it to give power to the hard drive.jamiet757 wrote:
If you have the correct adapter, yes. Like if you hook the drive up to a USB External Drive, then plug the USB into the laptop, yes it will work.SEREMAKER wrote:
would I be able to a laptop vista
Honestly SERE you obviously aren't a tech guru, no offense obviously, and you need it now so I would personally stuff it with the DIY and start looking for a tech shop.
Yeah, that's the direction my thinking is going.jamiet757 wrote:
If you have the correct adapter, yes. Like if you hook the drive up to a USB External Drive, then plug the USB into the laptop, yes it will work.SEREMAKER wrote:
would I be able to a laptop vista
SERE: if you are near a good computer store, you can get like, damn, can't think of the word, anyway, boxes that you can drop a desktop HDD into, and that have usb-cables coming out the back of them, so you can then use that HDD as an external HDD - if you want to connect it up to a laptop, that's what you're gonna need, dunno where you are or what sort of price they are, but they're not hideously expensive.
hard drive docks I believeScorpion0x17 wrote:
Yeah, that's the direction my thinking is going.jamiet757 wrote:
If you have the correct adapter, yes. Like if you hook the drive up to a USB External Drive, then plug the USB into the laptop, yes it will work.SEREMAKER wrote:
would I be able to a laptop vista
SERE: if you are near a good computer store, you can get like, damn, can't think of the word, anyway, boxes that you can drop a desktop HDD into, and that have usb-cables coming out the back of them, so you can then use that HDD as an external HDD - if you want to connect it up to a laptop, that's what you're gonna need, dunno where you are or what sort of price they are, but they're not hideously expensive.
Those also provide power, fixing the problem I was noting before.
edit: http://www.xoxide.com/thermaltake-blacx … n-usb.html that kind of thing
Not if you use one of them boxes I refer to, above...Flaming_Maniac wrote:
Remember though, you will have to turn on the original broken PC and leave the power hooked up to it to give power to the hard drive.jamiet757 wrote:
If you have the correct adapter, yes. Like if you hook the drive up to a USB External Drive, then plug the USB into the laptop, yes it will work.SEREMAKER wrote:
would I be able to a laptop vista
teeheedit: which of course you spotted straight away and posted to the effect of whilst I was typing...
Last edited by Scorpion0x17 (2008-10-10 06:37:14)
thats the truth on the me ... I would love to get into computers but as it stands, my knowledge is minimalFlaming_Maniac wrote:
Remember though, you will have to turn on the original broken PC and leave the power hooked up to it to give power to the hard drive.jamiet757 wrote:
If you have the correct adapter, yes. Like if you hook the drive up to a USB External Drive, then plug the USB into the laptop, yes it will work.SEREMAKER wrote:
would I be able to a laptop vista
Honestly SERE you obviously aren't a tech guru, no offense obviously, and you need it now so I would personally stuff it with the DIY and start looking for a tech shop.