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puter died

bison

bison

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Near Peace River-Alberta
My Dell 9400 puter failed to boot up this morning,..i did a diagnostic test.
diagnostics says ..the hard drive failed,..puter worked fine last night when i shut her down.
Not all files where backed up :skep:

Any advise??
 
Open the case and look for swollen or popped capacitors. http://www.badcaps.net/ on the lower right side has pics of what to look for. Don't open the hard drive. If you see these blown capacitors the PC has failed maybe not the hard drive.

You may be able to read the hard drive on another working computer if you put the drive in as a second drive. There are other extreme things like putting the drive in a freezer, spinning up the platters by hand etc. Local computer shop may be able to help.

If you must have the files data recovery starts at $1200 for a outfit that has the best chance to get them. http://www.krollontrack.com/ps211-data-recovery/
 
I bought an external hard drive enclosure for mine when it crashed. Took mine out, put it into the enclosure, had to remove the password(not fun, but I had mine password locked since I wasn't the only one that used it), and read the files out that way.
 
You should be able to get the data off by putting into another computer as a "slave" drive, AKA just for storage. Lots of older desktops have the hookups for 2 HDD's. Otherwise the kit to hook into USB is $25 or so online, or available at Wal-Mart, etc. (not sure where you'd need to go to find one in BFE, though).
 
I was able to start the computer in "safe mode" and did a system restore to an earlier date and it restarted normally but it is slooooww..
I also had Dell troubleshooting do an online test in safe mode and this test showed "hard drive-- passed" but shows in highlighted red some things need attention.
However the page won't let me scroll down to see what the problem is and aply a fix.:???:

I was able to write the important files to cd's:agreed:
.
I do have a external hard drive, the puter says it is up and working but i can't seem to transfer files to it.
There seems to be a problem with internet explorer or TS(on my other computer it shuts down as soon as i log on TS,on other sites it works fine):???:

puter is very slow right now but it is working

I don't know what to do next:dunno:
 
Replace the hard drive - it tested bad once. The drives are designed to hide defects and simply fail completely when they can't hide their internal issues anymore. So after testing bad the drive may have patched the bad sector and now is testing good. The internal wear level may be extreme.
 
WarWagon said:
Replace the hard drive - it tested bad once. The drives are designed to hide defects and simply fail completely when they can't hide their internal issues anymore. So after testing bad the drive may have patched the bad sector and now is testing good. The internal wear level may be extreme.
Click to expand...
Does that involve removing all programs currently on the computer before replacing and re-installing them after replacing the hard drive ?
 
You can 'clone' the drive. Otherwise a new drive is blank needing Windows and programs loaded on it.
 
Your 9400 is a laptop, isn't it? You should be able to take it in and get your data and programs cloned onto a new drive. Futureshop or Bestbuy can handle it for you. If I was you, I would go for a solid state drive.
 
yeah thats about it^^...lol

Well anyway the puter/hard drive kicked the bucket thissa morning.(maybe better to get a new puter cause it needs a new batt as well)

And now this one i'm using starts to have isuess of its own with windows internet explorer(it runs windows XP 7)( it tells me off and on by a pop-up window, "high memory use by windows explorer detected" ???
At times it tells me "sorry.. windows encountered a problem and has to close and "poof" it closes internet...what's that all about???
 
bison said:
yeah thats about it^^...lol

Well anyway the puter/hard drive kicked the bucket thissa morning.(maybe better to get a new puter cause it needs a new batt as well)

And now this one i'm using starts to have isuess of its own with windows internet explorer(it runs windows XP 7)( it tells me off and on by a pop-up window, "high memory use by windows explorer detected" ???
At times it tells me "sorry.. windows encountered a problem and has to close and "poof" it closes internet...what's that all about???
Click to expand...
I'd be in the truck headed to the store that sells new electronic stuff if I were you. Bring the old stuff with and see if they can get your old data out.
 
bison said:
yeah thats about it^^...lol

Well anyway the puter/hard drive kicked the bucket thissa morning.(maybe better to get a new puter cause it needs a new batt as well)

And now this one i'm using starts to have isuess of its own with windows internet explorer(it runs windows XP 7)( it tells me off and on by a pop-up window, "high memory use by windows explorer detected" ???
At times it tells me "sorry.. windows encountered a problem and has to close and "poof" it closes internet...what's that all about???
Click to expand...

When the hard drive goes bad it returns the wrong data when the computer requests it. Instead of the picture of a snowbank it returns a picture of a sunny day for example. So your programs are getting trashed by the failing drive. Garbage in is garbage out. This is why you are getting all the weird errors and whatnot now.

Computers live 5 years and that is the expected max life for them now. Time for a new one.
 
WarWagon said:
When the hard drive goes bad it returns the wrong data when the computer requests it. Instead of the picture of a snowbank it returns a picture of a sunny day for example. So your programs are getting trashed by the failing drive. Garbage in is garbage out. This is why you are getting all the weird errors and whatnot now.

Computers live 5 years and that is the expected max life for them now. Time for a new one.
Click to expand...

Duh,..this puter might be 5 yrs old but has een used maybe 5 months in total
 
If its a desktop unit, you can check the hdd with one of these w/o having to removing the drive:

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=2020-OTB&cat=HDD

If its a laptop, youll need to remove the drive, not too bad, just have to figure out which 'cover' to remove to access the drive. Plus theyre usually in a 'tray' you might have to remove it from, , , , -c-

(Im not a nerd, Im a retired heavy equiptment operator/grade checker, Ive just been very interested in computers since the early '80's) (still have my timex-sinclair somewhere)
 
cornemuse said:
If its a desktop unit, you can check the hdd with one of these w/o having to removing the drive:

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=2020-OTB&cat=HDD

If its a laptop, youll need to remove the drive, not too bad, just have to figure out which 'cover' to remove to access the drive. Plus theyre usually in a 'tray' you might have to remove it from, , , , -c-

(Im not a nerd, Im a retired heavy equiptment operator/grade checker, Ive just been very interested in computers since the early '80's) (still have my timex-sinclair somewhere)
Click to expand...
Its a laptop.
The hard drive is easy to pull out and replace.
I went to a puter repair shop,they put a used drive in there and ran a diagnosis free of charge while i watched,...results....on top of the hard drive ,the batt is about done and the screen is failing,+ i don't have the recovery disc for this puter either.

Was much cheaper to buy a new laptop,...wich i did.
 
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