Computer Gurus...UNITE! All for One, One for All!

[luv_mist]

Re: Computer Gurus...UNITE! All for One, One for All!

Gurus, keep talking cause I'm taking notes. I'm definitely going to be doing a few of these things when I build my computer whenever that is. I sure could have used some of that help a few months/years, ago. Sucks though cause I lost so much crap. Still, I'm all good. Man, this site is wonderful.......

[mjb2124]

Re: Computer Gurus...UNITE! All for One, One for All!

The advantage of having all your personal data on a separate partition is you can reinstall, upgrade or replace your OS without moving or risking your data.

I'd go a step further and have a secondary hard drive. That way if the hard drive fails, you won't lose any data.

I have a C:, D: and E: drive on my home PC. C: and D: are one drive (2 40 GB partitions). E: is a 120 GB drive.

C: - Operating System and applications
D: - Swap file, Documents, music etc...
E: - Documents backup via a script I wrote, movies, software, financial data backup (original on C

[rubisco43]

Re: Computer Gurus...UNITE! All for One, One for All!

I'd go a step further and have a secondary hard drive. That way if the hard drive fails, you won't lose any data.

I have a C:, D: and E: drive on my home PC. C: and D: are one drive (2 40 GB partitions). E: is a 120 GB drive.

C: - Operating System and applications
D: - Swap file, Documents, music etc...
E: - Documents backup via a script I wrote, movies, software, financial data
backup (original on C

close to what i have. c: for OS and apps. d: for important documents, downloads, etc, e: for music.

definitely invest in getting either an external hdd or an external enclosure and pop in a hdd in it. saves tons of time and energy.

[FSU_Animal]

Re: Computer Gurus...UNITE! All for One, One for All!

Just an update:

It appears I might have bad sectors on my hard drive, possibly bad memory as well.

I bought my computer sometime back in November 2005. It only came with 512 so around Christmas I bought a 1GB stick of ram. Never had a problem with the computer being slow though. Oh sure, I've had times when the computer was just acting slow but it always went away. I did make the mistake of not defragging my computer though. I do a ton of work on my laptop on a daily basis so it suprises me not that this could be the reason for occasional slowdowns.

However, where I think the real mistake came in was just recent. I was trying to get some JavaScript files working that I wrote for class (BS in Internet Systems and Software Technology) and I could not seem to find out why I could get them to work locally but not when I put them on the web server. Since I was new to how JavaScripts worked online, I figured that I should go into my Internet Tools and allow all cookies, both First Party and Third Party cookies, to be installed without being prompted, as well as lower my security settings to the lowest I allowed, as well as turning off my firewall. WELL, ******* me forgot to make sure I went back and reset everything back to normal since that did not resolve my JavaScripts not working issue. So once again, I make yet another classic rookie mistake when it comes to care of my computer. I take these security measures for granted and it probably comes from my ego. I mean, I've spent a vast majority of my life on a computer as it is, so I tend to let things slip by figuring if something happens, I can always fix it since I know so much. So you can only begin to imagine how pissed off I am at myself for being so *** **** stupid with my computer.

As for the updates on how things have gone.

I tried to do a reinstall over C:\Windows. I kept receiving tons of errors back stating that a certain file could not be copied.

So I tried a clean install by creating C:\Windows2. Same errors.

So I tried a reinstall over C:\Windows. Same errors.

However, after doing those above tasks, I am now able to gain access into my C:\Documents and Settings and all subfolders without being denied access even though I did not input a password to access C:\Windows through Recovery Console. The only issue with that is that I cannot COPY over to a removeable media...which being that it is a laptop and my OS bootable disk is in the only drive I have, that option would have been out of the question anyways.

So now we are forced to go find ourselves a Laptop to IDE Hard Drive Adaptor, either at CompUSA or BestBuy down in Destin, FL this weekend (if we get to do that, that is). We are going to attempt to have my computer repaired since it is still under warranty and we are going to have my data recovered if that falls under the warranty as well (probably not but we might have it done anyways).

The best part is that my second set of courses start today and they are over "Linus Installation and Administration" and "Managing a Windows Server 2003 Environment". My very first computer I built, well, it has a 120GB hard drive that has not been used yet because I bought it on sale (Western Digital) less than a year ago and since then we have not been able to get that computer working. So my wife and I are going to get that computer back up and running, set up two different servers on there, and go from there. That will be our file server, web server, etc... Backups will be created from now on and saved on that server.

I thought I had lost all hope but thanks to everyone at OS, MM, MN, and FF, I've been able to somewhat see the light at the end of the tunnel. Thanks everyone. I'll keep you posted as to what happens. Hopefully, if all goes well, people can refer to this thread one day if the same ever happens to them.