Question for the computer guru Rich

[Robert Spradley]

Tuesday night my pc worked fine. Last night when I tried to start it up it would not load, not even in safe mode. My software was all at the office.(aargh). Well tonight after booting up with the boot disk, it had to recreate all of the systems registers. After getting up to reload and windows coming up, I tried to restore it to a previous day, but there were no previous days to restore to. I did not lose any information, other than hardware drivers and bus drivers. Do you think this may have been a virus or just a flute? If it was a virus I sure it did not orginate from this website, but probably from something my kids did. Any ideas ol mighty one?? Robert

 

[Robert Spradley]

excuse all of the poor grammar, I a little upset. Flute should be fluke, but I'll hum u a few bars. I see other mistakes but I don't care

 

[Rich Stern]

Robert, I'm sorry, but it's impossible for me to diagnose what happened from what you described. It could be a hardware failure, a software bug, a virus. Anything and everything on or in your machine is in the circle of suspects.



Not sure what you mean "tried to restore it to a previous day." What were you trying to restore to a previous day? What backup software/hardware were you using to create the backup you are referring to?



As far as viruses go: Websites don't infect computers with viruses. They come from files. Files that you download from the web, receive via email, or via diskette or other media that you use with your computer. You should always be running an up-to-date anti-virus program, and be very suspicious of any file you receive that you didn't expect.



Sorry I can't be of more help. I know it's frustrating to lose a computer to these types of situations. Make a backup copy of everything that is important to you, keep the backups up to date, and be vigilant against viruses. Resist the temptation to add or update software on your machine unless you have a genuine need for the software.

 

[Robert Spradley]

Rich, I understand where viruses come from. All I was trying to do was not get anyone here alarmed, since there was talked a few weeks ago about someone generating emails from this website. We know its possible for people to generate emails and make it appear that it came from some other place. We know you trust you. Thanks for your suggestions, I may find a hardware failure when I get around to loading all of the drivers.



The "restore to a different day". I am running Windows ME. It has a restore feature that allows you to restore to a previous day. I was able to get to computer to come up without having to format the hard drive. When I went to this restore feature, there were no restore points. What I'll probably find when I check, is that my hard drive probably took a hit from a storm and got some bad clusters. Again thanks for your input. Robert

 

[Dave P]

Try to boot to a command prompt and type scanreg /restore. This will have a bunch of registry back ups to choose from provided you did not restore over this file. You can also reinstall windows from a command prompt; the files should be in c:windowsoptionscabs or c:windowsoptionsinstall.

If neither of these work and you have bad sectors on your drive buy a new hard drive and set up your old one as a slave so you can copy out important files. One trick I have used with a new drive is to copy every file from the old one except the win386.swp file. This will make the new drive work without reinstalling any programs!

 

[Ken Neeley]

With Windows ME you should have a restore disk...it allows you to completely reformat the hard drive or restore the files to their previous condition. Turn the PC off, put the disk in and boot up. Try the Restore function first.

Good luck.