I need PC help

[mikedudley17]

system restore is inaccessible. its missing the file link or whatever.

update, went to gop fix the damned thing and as i got ready to plug it in, the power pack fried out. so i cant do jack because i do not know how long it will take to install windows xp again and i dont wanna run out of battery mid installation. is it just a sign to get a new one(laptop)?

[Aveo07z]

I know exactly what your talking about ( I own a commercial networking/PC business and am the Supervisor of the Verizon Fios system for the state of Ohio, so yeah I have a bit of experience)

Unfortuently the fix is going to be painful as you WILL loose all of your settings. If you could run .exe files, id say run CCleaner.. but OBVIOUSLY you can't, so you have to do one of two things.

1. Reformat .. place your Windows CD in the drive.. and boot to it... this will start you from scratch... this is similar to the parallel idea.. except with parallel.. youll basically cut your hard drive in half storage wise.

2. Repair Load.. this may work... I can not garuntee it tho.. follow the same steps as a reformat.. skip the first "repair" option.. when you get to the section of the process where you choose what partition you want to install to you will do a repair load then .. by pressing "r"

I can run you through this no problem .. if you need any help .. just give my work cell a call .... 614-592-8347 ... we can get you fixed. but chances are ...everything you dont have backed up is gone.

[ontarian_frog]

I know exactly what your talking about ( I own a commercial networking/PC business and am the Supervisor of the Verizon Fios system for the state of Ohio, so yeah I have a bit of experience)

Unfortuently the fix is going to be painful as you WILL loose all of your settings. If you could run .exe files, id say run CCleaner.. but OBVIOUSLY you can't, so you have to do one of two things.

1. Reformat .. place your Windows CD in the drive.. and boot to it... this will start you from scratch... this is similar to the parallel idea.. except with parallel.. youll basically cut your hard drive in half storage wise.

2. Repair Load.. this may work... I can not garuntee it tho.. follow the same steps as a reformat.. skip the first "repair" option.. when you get to the section of the process where you choose what partition you want to install to you will do a repair load then .. by pressing "r"

I can run you through this no problem .. if you need any help .. just give my work cell a call .... 614-592-8347 ... we can get you fixed. but chances are ...everything you dont have backed up is gone.

That's what I told him to do a few posts ago.

[mikedudley17]

well im waiting on dell at the moment. they are shipping me a new AC adapter as the new one i bought from the 6 months ago crapped out. as soon as i get it im gonna try the repair thing and if that dont work, there were a couple of other suggestions to try. thanks guys, will let you know how it turns out.

[ontarian_frog]

well im waiting on dell at the moment. they are shipping me a new AC adapter as the new one i bought from the 6 months ago crapped out. as soon as i get it im gonna try the repair thing and if that dont work, there were a couple of other suggestions to try. thanks guys, will let you know how it turns out.

worst comes to worst, buy a 2.5 inch hard drive enclosure and stick the hard drive in so you can back up everything on another computer before formatting.

[mikedudley17]

ARG! i reinstalled XP and still same probs, nothing fixed. will continue trying.

tempted to call u, Aveo07z...

Edit: i went on the dougknox.com site and went to the file association fixes part and followed the tip on top of the page which says: "NOTE: If your EXE file associations are corrupted, it can be difficult to open REGEDIT, or to even import REG files. To work around this, press CTRL-ALT-DEL and open Task Manager. Once there, click File, then hold down the CTRL key and click New Task (Run). This will open a Command Prompt window. Enter REGEDIT.EXE and press Enter.
Thanks to Nigel Andrews for this tip."

I was actually able to open internet explorer like this. so, i can get into my regisry editor as well. is there a way to fix the prob from there?

[ontarian_frog]

download the filetype association fix by opening iexplorer that way, then run the fix that way too...should work.

[Aveo07z]

If you have reformatted, and as soon as you start windows its back to the same thing then I would say its a hardware issue, I'd start with a new hard drive.

The format was supposed to erase ALL the old files, along with all corruption of windows files. The format set all new "virgin software in place, meaning free from corruption, so there fore free from your error. So that being the case, I'd say its not a software issue, as it should all be new anyway, and move to hardware. The hard drive being the most likely, followed by you memory.

[khan4rtist]

You may have not correctly formatted your hard drive, when you reinstall XP, it will give you 2 formatting options. One is quick format and the other is regular format, you should have chosen the regular formatting that way the drive gets "zeroed out" which basically means that every single thing on the hard drive is erased. Sometimes, remanance of another installation will affect your new installation of XP.

[AveoRob]

Just for clarification the only difference between a quick format and a regular one is that a regular format scans the disk for bad sectors. Both formats only erase the file allocation table, thus actually leaving the entire file system intact, just no index or directory. To completely erase the contents, first choose to delete the partition, then create an new partition, and format. This is still not completely unrecoverable as far as computer forensics go, but will remove all remnants of previous installs. Try this before you buy hardware. chkdsk /r will also scan the disk for bad sectors.