Software jigsaw puzzle

[a Silly Person]

Window XP has decided not to let me in log in anymore. ?

That's right!

It was just another typical Sunday morning. I had just stepped into my office to check emails, scheduled spy and virus scans (computer runs 24/7), and possibly get some Playground scrambling in before the family tells me it's time to come out of my office.
As the monitor's screen slowly lights up, as if to say, "It's Sunday morning, go back to bed", I see an unfamiliar window emerge. It was a very dark blue colored screen that said something like, Windows has had a page fault in a non-paginated area.
This message told me that if this is the first time I had ever seen this message, that I should restart my computer, so I did.

The computer booted up just fine. Windows booted up just fine. When the Welcome/log on to Windows screen came up, there were no Log-on selections to choose from. I then keyed in control/alt/delete twice to get the normal sign-on window. My user name was already typed in so all I had to do was enter my password. NOTHING WORKED.

I spent about 2 hours with Dell Tech Support on this. None of them there had ever heard of this before. I ended up installing a second operating Windows XP on my computer, at their suggestion, just so we could get inside of this computer to see what we could see. Everything that was saved on my "C-drive" was pretty much in tact. Everything that was saved in "My documents" was totally gone. "NOTE TO MYSELF, AND EVERYONE ELSE, DO NOT SAVE ANYTHING IN "MY DOCUMENTS" EVER AGAIN. SAVE IT IN A FILE ON THE C-DRIVE FOLDER.

I do back up business and personal files but not every single day. I am presently trying to get my phone/fax software to work again. Uninstalled, reinstalled about 4 times now and it still wont let me send a fax. Reinstalling all of the programs I had earlier.

NO TIME TO PLAY ON THE PLAYGROUND!!!!!!!!!!!

I am just totally disgusted with these Windows systems and programs. Most of them don't let a person get deep enough into them to let us actually control them anymore. McAfee won't even let me shut that program down. I suppose that there are still some people out there yet who are more ignorant than me so these programs think that they need to do more controlling so that these other folks won't be wrecking anything. I don't know.....

Anyone else ever hear of anything like this before? I would think that there has got to be a way of digging into that old Windows operating system folder, (that still remains in my C-drive) and repair whatever it is that messed this up. Even though the Windows folder is there, there are certain folders that are sitting empty now after this happened. One of these empty folders is my Profiles folder so I am not so sure that anything can be salvaged.

I am guessing that it was a case of a number of things that may have happened at the same time. Two scanning programs hanging on my hitting the "okay" button after their scans. A possible "brown-out", (and I do have a battery backup thing in good working order).

Hmmm, maybe I was hacked. I do try to disconnect from the Internet whenever I am not using it, since my computer does stay on all the time. I don't remember if I disconnected this last time.

4-year-old computer..... maybe it is about time to upgrade anyway. I am wondering if I need to cinch up my belt a few notches and just go ahead and buy a, dare I say, Mac? Windows has just begun scaring the hell out of me.

[Death's Shadow]

My guess is a windows update did this too you.. is very similar to what happened to me a few weeks ago.. I reinstalled everything and dragged my data folders out of the backed up c: folder to the new ones. so I ended up loosing very little. If you convert to mac( correct me here Red cause I'm not sure on this) You will lose alot of data that will not convert over. + you will have to buy Mac versions of the software that you need to run your apps.(for the ones not already loaded) Mac's are a hell of a business comp. That was their original purpose.

any assist I can offer Ill be glad to do.. just msg me here on the forums or email me. [e-mail] but you seem like a smart guy(less the mac converting comment ) so you may not need my help lol.

[RedRock]

dreamingshadow said:

My guess is a windows update did this too you.. is very similar to what happened to me a few weeks ago.. I reinstalled everything and dragged my data folders out of the backed up c: folder to the new ones. so I ended up loosing very little. If you convert to mac( correct me here Red cause I'm not sure on this) You will lose alot of data that will not convert over. + you will have to buy Mac versions of the software that you need to run your apps.(for the ones not already loaded) Mac's are a hell of a business comp. That was their original purpose.

any assist I can offer Ill be glad to do.. just msg me here on the forums or email me. [e-mail] but you seem like a smart guy(less the mac converting comment ) so you may not need my help lol.

Most windows programs let you export data in files the Mac can directly read, so you are not likely to lose the ability to use your old data, plus if you mainly work with Word and Excel, the Mac OS Office version lets you go back and forth nearly seamlessly from PC Office to Mac Office (some minor formatting of pages is the main difference, plus fonts if you're not careful); use email or remote connect to servers or jump drives to transfer your files back and forth from a work pc to a home Mac, etc., effortlessly. And let me point out, AGAIN, if you buy a new mac today, it will run Windows software natively (you just have to have a copy of windows you can install on part of the Mac, and then boot it up in Windows) for those few apps you want to keep using without buying Mac software. The Macs come with a lot of software already, but I recommend the MS Office package for Mac. AppleWorks also 6.2.9 runs just fine though, and at $79 is a great deal if you want something cheaper than Office--it does word processing, drawing, graphing, and spreadsheets and reads from and writes to PC and Mac Word and Excel (less some formattting) files.

I have just never ever heard of or experienced any such horror tales on a Mac with OS X. On my work pc, I've had power outages with restarts that move my profiles/prefs out of the Windows NT startup situation in favor of default ones, but so far I've been able to find the old ones on the hard disk and delete the newly created profiles/prefs or to install backup copies of the profiles/prefs. But my IT people forced a MacAfee thing on my pc, but I already had Norton SystemWorks on it, and those two fought each other for control and ended up basically paralyzing my pc; I had to give up and uninstall Norton (or most of it; some of it just won't come out now matter what I do), but now I can't run Windows cleanup by Norton, etc. that I used to use regularly to help. But, my government knows best! Have to use what they want!

Always, of course, keep backups of important data and applications, but all that registry crap and disappearing prefs/profiles, and forced wizards and .exe files, as if I can't unzip files and put them where they belong, it just blows my mind. Get a Mac, get peace of mind.

[Marauder(CDN)]

I have seen that before...upon restart after the BIOS screens you hit F8 and try to enter "Safe Mode"..sometimes it works..sometimes it doesn't...upon entering you have a few options..restore to a previous date has worked for me. If this fails to work I have used the repair option that is available on some Xp discs to get back up and running.

[a Silly Person]

I knew that I could count on you guys to share your helpful past experience stories with me. I'll bet that you guys can't even imagine what it is like anymore.... to be as ignorant as me, LOL

Yep, Tech support and myself tried the "repair" option with F-8 and it didn't help. We tried so many things that my head was hurting big-time from information-overload.

I chatted with a Best Buy "Geek" today and he told me that I may have several things that might be the culprit. Possible bad sectors on the drive. Possible bad drive. Possible bad sector on the area of the disk where my profile settings are... etc etc. I just figured that it was time for my daughter to get a new(er) computer, mine, and time for me to get a new one too.

Sorry Red, (and I really mean it), I did not buy a Mac (and there was much rejoicing by others)

I figured that it was time for a Gateway. It wasn't the most expensive one but this is what it came with:


Intel Pentium D processor 935
(Dual-Core 65 bit processor with EM64T Technology. Each core operates at 3.2 GHz, 2 x 2MB L2 cache, 800 MHz FSB)

Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 (which I upgraded to an ATI Radeon VisionTek X1550)

Dual Channel 1024 MB DDR2

(I am actually "laughing out loud")
I really don't know what all of that really means. The "Geek" told me that the graphics upgrade was the best one for this computer and I believed him. I may have been gullible I don't know. All I know is that I was quite impressed with this guy's input, who basically missed his break just to help me out for an hour. He reminded me of, well, you guys, being very helpful.

I guess that we will see how this plays out. I have so much to learn about the new Vista operating system that it really isn't funny at the moment.

The next time I log on the the forums, it may be from the Looney-Bin.... with Garp's men in the white coats watching my every move. I think that I have about 4 days of transferring files, programs and other such things onto this computer so I probably won't be logging on to the Play Ground until next week some time.... (by that time I should be ready to kill anything that pops up on my screen, whether you are typing or not, LOL.)

Again, thanks for your help, DS, Red and Mar!

I hope to be back soon!

[Death's Shadow]

GATEWAY!!!! ? drive a plank through my black lil heart. Your killin me here silly.. arrrrrrrg.. LMAO

btw did I mention I hate proprietary systems? clone is the only way to go. But gateway is better than it used to be. and (sorry RED close your eyes for this part ) better than going over to the dark side with mac.

[RedRock]

Once you go Mac, you never go back!

[Death's Shadow]

Thats because your ruined for life and baned from the rest of normal society after going mac.. sorta like the scarlet letter. he he (all in fun bud all in fun)

[RedRock]

dreamingshadow said:

Thats because your ruined for life and baned from the rest of normal society after going mac.. sorta like the scarlet letter. he he (all in fun bud all in fun)

Yep, the Mac is indeed a life-changing event! But don't take my word for it:

"The Macintosh computer heralds a major change in how people view and interact with computers and their applications." - Bill Gates, 1984

[Death's Shadow]

I think he was trying to warn us of the eternal hell we would suffer if we went mac. LMAO

[michiganmilitia]

Suffer? Are you suffering Red? I know I suffer every time I go to work and have to deal with Windoze.

Yesterday my boss called me in to his office and needed some help with his computer. I walked in and this is what I saw:



The screen says: "Check to be sure that you have adequate disk space"

Run out of hard drive space and your computer wacks out?

Immediately below the screen shows: "physical memory dump complete"

hahahaha

[Death's Shadow]

aaaa the blue screen of death

[michiganmilitia]

yea... Thank God my Mac at home is immune to the blue screen

[a Silly Person]

AHHHHHHH!!!!!!
Make it go away!!

Pretty funny what the first sentence says though.

"Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer."

IT'S JUST TOO FREAKIN LATE NOW, ISN'T IT!


Nice "screen capture" by the way....
LMAO

[a Silly Person]

Getting back to Gateway. I remember when I bought my first PC back in 1995. I bought a Digital Starion 133 MHz system with what, about 6 gigs of drive space for about $4,000.00. OMG! pretty outrageous. Gateway computers cost more than most of the available brands at that time.

My Brother-in-law was really disappointed that I didn't go with the Gateway brand. He was under the impression that Gateway was the Cadillac of computers so he pushed that brand in my face every chance he got. I think that it was because his company had bought a couple 50 of them, and also, quite possibly, that there weren't a whole lot of options out there for brands at that time.

Here comes that Plank, DS. (and I am using that mean and nasty Gateway computer to "drive-er-home". <Heh heh>

Hope to be hooked up again this evening. Gotta make sure that I have the maps, updates and patches transferred over first.