- I lost my place in Half Life2. That’s my problem.
- Meanwhile a slew of people have all sorts of suggestions. None work as advertised.
- Luckily there is not a lot of news.
- Yahoo and Microsoft officially met. The hunt is still on.
- Intel says its Atom machines will be $199 loaded.
- Verizon embraces P2P.
Right click here and select ‘Save Link As…’ to download the mp3 file.
Try Spinright for recovery. Steve Gibson says its great.
Just run Vista. Get the Ultimate version. Upgrade the machines ram. You can tell us all about the things in Vista you don’t like. It will be fun. Don’t turn off UAC for the most fun.
John
Bart PE will let you copy that file if that is what you want to do.
You boot to the Bart PE cd and copy it to and external USB and then boot the other machine and replace the bad one.
If you reinstall it is only wise to make an image of the drive once it is installed the way you want it. It is an effortless process. I can rebuild a machine with all the apps software installed in under 15 min. With Bart PE and Drive Snapshot. Even if I have to replace the drive. You just have to buy the same drive model.
I must say, I’m a huge fan of your stuff, Dvorak, but this podcast just sucks. I’m tired of hearing just your voice. The reason podcasts are great is because there is MORE than one person, and disagreements between them. Love the site, and your other ventures, but this podcast is a waste of time IMO.
Take care
My favorite Tech5Report ever;)
# 4 GregA
LOL.
He said MAYBE Greg. MAAAY BEEE! lol 🙂
You could be right but still nothing he said would lead to that as the only conclusion. A corrupt file does not inevitably lead to bad drive.
Kev50027:
“I must say, I’m a huge fan of your stuff, Dvorak, but this podcast just sucks. I’m tired of hearing just your voice. The reason podcasts are great is because there is MORE than one person, and disagreements between them. Love the site, and your other ventures, but this podcast is a waste of time IMO.”
No way. This is the best podcast out there. The others are a bunch of ass kissing do gooders who are afraid tell it like it is.
What John needs right now is more advice on how to fix his machine.
Hey John, boot up Corporate Mod Boot and use the HD test. All the software tricks in the world wont fix a bad drive.
http://www.nu2.nu/corpmodboot/
Don’t listen to these boneheads. They just want to be told that the world is peachy and everything will be ok.
Let us know how it goes with your machine.
I just tested it
I copied the “system” file from windiows\system32\config\ using Bart PE. I copied it to an external USB.
It works without question!!
Hi John,
A repair install is different than going to the recovery console. Have you tried a repair install? Just Google it for directions.
Just a comment to liven up the podcasts – consider a stand-up bass player playing in the background. And when it comes to speaking of Microsoft issues, maybe a violin player. 🙂
I Googled Atom out of curiosity and saw that people are bashing it already!
Why do computer geeks do that?
I think it’s fantastic to have a turn-key $200 Linux system. More power to Intel — assuming they can actually deliver it at those prices.
No, it’s clearly not a computer for most computer geeks. But the average person who wants to surf the net and do email? It just might fit the bill. I like that it is fanless.
John I’ve found if Spinrite can’t repair the drive most times it isn’t worth even trying anything else, if the drive is really damage and not a corrupt file or registry entry, then a new drive and reinstall are your only alternative.
Have you tried taking the drive out and putting it in an external enclosure and hooking it up to another computer? I’ve found that if I can still access the files the drive is “normally” not damaged but damaged drives from what I’ve experienced will give you an error message or just lock up when you try to access the external drive.
You can also download the drive manufactures HD utility and run a maintenance test many times they will also diagnose a failing drive or let you know if the drive passes their tests.
Hope This helps, Roger
Assumimng that you have an SP2 XP CD a repair install is an option. Just go through the routine as if you are going to install the operating system. If the installer finds a previous windows installation it will give you the option to (r)repair the operating system.. This will be the 2nd time you will see the repair option.. the first puts you into the recovery desktop.
It will take the normal 39 minutes and your system will be back but needing windows updates. For this I use Offline Update
http://tinyurl.com/384hlq
create this cd on your laptop while you’re waiting for the repair install to finish.. pop this update cd in and you will get all of the critical updates for your system with only 1 reboot and not having to waste a lot of time.
If the hard drive is hosed.. Steve Gibsosn’s Spinrite has saved my bacon more than once http:/www.grc.com (you should remember steve sa he’s been around almost as long as you have :-> )
[Please use TinyUrl.com for overly long URLs. – ed.]
John,
Don’t try to copy this “system” file from another machine. It will mess it up even more. This file is your registry and each machine registry is specific to that machine.
Copying it over from machine A to machine B won’t help.
You need to restore your system file from \windows\repair folder.
There you will find a backup copy of your system file.
You can’t access system file cause its opened in “non-shared” mode by the OS itself.
Here you can find more about it if you care: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa914735.aspx
Just follow this instructions and you will be good to go:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545
John,
Why don’t you just save yourself a lot of aggravation and get a Mac? (you said that too)
Don’t you love how Windows XP takes an error and makes it a permanent user chosen setting. My Y T Trashbin lost filename labels in Thumbnail mode. And after rebooting, its become permanent. But only in my Admin account. It still shows all the filenames (in all modes) in my Limited access account. Anyone know how to reset this stupid setting that got recorded in the registry?
. . . I don’t understand what you’re getting at John. You seem to bash people for offering suggestions and assistance. Whether snitty or not shouldn’t matter, people actually answered. If you didn’t want suggestions and help why the hell moan about it then?
I went months without my desktop because I thought it was XP related (and didn’t want to reload crap) only to find it was bad RAM from Corsair. It gave me an excuse to upgrade the components and make it better, after growling at it for too long. However, I had good backups and a clean raid setup so life was relatively good.
So are you saying that you’d rather whine and bitch at us for offering suggestions than do something simple like taking an image backup of your system, or ghosting an image of it for restoration after all the software is loaded? If you just want to be a tech bitcher fine, then hire a systems guy to take care of your systems for you and save you from yourself.
#19
It’s because John makes a LOT more money being a curmudgeon… If he were an accomplished computer repairman he would be a Working Stiff like the rest of us…
Memo to John:
Do the F**king repair install from an SP2 install CD. NOT the console. You won’t have to reinstall anything but the system patches, and those will be installed automatically…
Ah, also check the HD for physical damage before trying the Repair Install. SpinRite is the best. If U got a bad block used by the system, SpinRite will try to recover it, and then move the data to a safe block.
If a Linux LiveCD doesn’t work, why don’t you try Steve Gibsons tool; SpinRite?
I do a lot of Windows programming which means I’m constantly doing things to my system which are unholy like downgrading. One thing I’ve learned is that you reach a tipping point where the OS goes into a death spiral and there is now way out of it. The congenial and mild mannered Mr Dvorak is experiencing that.
I now do all my work on a Macintosh and run Windows under VMWare. I keep images on an external Firewire 800 pocket drive as master versions. The whole things works quite well except for some games. For that bootcamp is a better option.
For all those guys who are saying that John “should be” doing something or other to fix his problems (e.g. repair install, ghosting, etc) “should have” realized that his system is long past that point. He needs a new drive like my dog Clancy needs a new bladder. The worst part is if he gets a working SP2 version of windows then you will need to reinstall >90 updates. I personally recommend a bottle of North County Zinfandel for that type of problem.
Of course, if it were a Mac computer that went unbootable you would have none of these troubles:
You would go to the Apple Store, deliver it to a genius, who would, after some twiddling about, say that the HD would have to be replaced, and then You’d leave the damn thing there and return after 3 or four weeks to pick up yous Mac, witha a squeakily clean HD. Of course, you’d had to pay for it, since it was over the warranty, and still had to reinstall all the programs. And if you asked for the old drive to try to recover the stuuf you had there, the Genius would have told you that the drive now belongs to Apple.
Of course this won’t happen to a true Mac fan, because when the Genius says the HD is dead, you’d already been salivating over an Air or MacBook Pro, taking the dead HD as an excuse to buy yourself a New Mac.
So, John, since you can afford it, get a Mac. You’ll be happier.
Spinrite is definitely worth a try (I’ve used multiple versions since v1.0, which BTW came on a 5 1/4 floppy back in 1985 or so
– hundreds if not thousands of success stories, and Gibson’s a good guy who does a lot of security related work that you can take advantage of for free.
and that really is my email address
For xxx sake John, just use Spinrite and you will have the file back and we can all get on with our lives…..
Spinrite will have it fixed in just a couple of hours.
John – people were trying to help you and you responded with “bla bla bla” and mocking voices. Meanwhile the “prognosticator” can’t fix his own machine. Pathetic.
And to add my two cents.
Let’s assume the problem is hard drive based, and just a harbinger of things to come.
First, take the potentially bad drive in a plastic bag and place it in the freezer for at least 24 hours.
Why? Multiple reasons. First, if it happens to be bad electronics caused by heat, freezing the drive may cause the problem to reappear somewhat later than sooner and hopefully not until after you have copied the files you want to keep. This may only buy you a few minutes, but a few minutes is often all you need.
Also, freezing the drive thickens the lubricant in the drives bearings which acts to dampen the platter vibration while slowing the platter speed somewhat, improving the probability that the read head can pick up the data from the bad track(s).
Additionally, all modern drives use an anti-vibration method which often uses a viscous liquid like silicone gel. This anti-vibration method often weakens over time and freezing the drive thickens the gel allowing the anti-vibration to work for a short period.
Then use spinrite to copy the files. Do it as quickly as you can.
# 19 Jim said,
…why the hell moan about it then?
—–
As John said, he complains bitterly all the time. Where else did the “Cranky” come from in the name Cranky Geeks?
*B^)
John, if you do try a Linux, Knoppix is probably best suited to this kind of thing. It’s quite easy to mount drives, make them read/write (the default is read-only) examine and copy files and so forth from the GUI, no Shell needed. Eg, to mount a drive for copying to, right-click its icon on the desktop and choose Mount, then right-click again and choose Actions>Change read/write mode. You’ll be asked “Do you really want to make partition /dev/sda1 writeable?” Just click “Yes” and away you go!
Of course, if you _want_ to try some Shell stuff the console icon is right there at the bottom of the screen.
As of January, Knoppix is up to version 5.1.1 . There is a DVD version with 5GB of software on it — I recommend that one!
Good luck!
joaoPT on #24.
Easy there big fella, it’s just a computer. I use the Mac because it has the most stable virtualization platform these days, and I think virtualization is the best alternative for geeks.
Microsoft has gotten in and out of virtualization game so many times that it’s a confused mess now on Windows. It’s absurd that I can run Longhorn virtually on a Mac PowerBook more easily than on a Dell blade but there you go.
As for marketing and sales, well guess what? They all suck. You want to hear something even more sickening than a Mac genius? MS spends $5 billion a year on marketing and sales against $2 billion a year in R&D. It tell you something about priorities.