Now, I think, it's fixed.
Aug. 24th, 2005 02:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miss_ytI spoke too soon when I said that my computer was all right. It worked for a while, then blue-screened me. I had it set to run CHKDSK on itself when I started it up next, and it froze in the middle of that proceedure. I reset it, same thing happened - and then, when it tried to start, it gave me the option of choosing Safe Mode. I did, but that didn't work, nor did anything else.
So I took the computer to the technician at work who said it was probably a virus. At my father's suggestion, we went to a computer parts store and I bought an "enclosure." Basically, you put a hard drive in it and plug it into another computer's USB port. We put my laptop's hard drive in it. It wouldn't work with his computer, but my computer (the one at work) registered it.
I ran CHKDSK on it, which fixed a number of corrupted files. Seems I didn't have a virus after all - the fan on my laptop was busted, so the hard drive overheated and got corrupted. Fortunately, it seems, most of my data is still fine. The desktop can read my (now) external hard drive just fine, and I'm running a virus scan and a couple of other things on it. I hope it will work when I plug it back into my laptop. And yes, I got the fan replaced. I managed to dissuade Dell from sending over a technician to put it in, but they did have to send an authorized dealer to the apartment with the new fan, and I had to give him the old one in exchange. To my surprise, I still have some warranty that made it all free of charge.
Some things I've learned from this experience (besides "don't leave your laptop on for days at a stretch to run file sharing programs" and "make sure your heatsink is working") are:
1. If you have an enclosure, and you get a new hard drive and put it in there, you have an external hard drive. I've been wanting one anyway so maybe I will get a new drive to put in the enclosure. It'll be cheaper than buying an actual external hard drive.
2. If your hard drive is shot, putting it in the freezer overnight will give it a few more hours, and you can back up your data. No, I didn't try this, it's a piece of computer folklore that our technician at work told me about.
3. If you are a writer and have stories on your hard drive, back them up with obsessive frequency.
Now, I think, I owe him lunch or something, because he took a lot of trouble over my laptop, and would have been willing to recover some of the data for just the price of the disks he wrote it to if it came to that.
So I took the computer to the technician at work who said it was probably a virus. At my father's suggestion, we went to a computer parts store and I bought an "enclosure." Basically, you put a hard drive in it and plug it into another computer's USB port. We put my laptop's hard drive in it. It wouldn't work with his computer, but my computer (the one at work) registered it.
I ran CHKDSK on it, which fixed a number of corrupted files. Seems I didn't have a virus after all - the fan on my laptop was busted, so the hard drive overheated and got corrupted. Fortunately, it seems, most of my data is still fine. The desktop can read my (now) external hard drive just fine, and I'm running a virus scan and a couple of other things on it. I hope it will work when I plug it back into my laptop. And yes, I got the fan replaced. I managed to dissuade Dell from sending over a technician to put it in, but they did have to send an authorized dealer to the apartment with the new fan, and I had to give him the old one in exchange. To my surprise, I still have some warranty that made it all free of charge.
Some things I've learned from this experience (besides "don't leave your laptop on for days at a stretch to run file sharing programs" and "make sure your heatsink is working") are:
1. If you have an enclosure, and you get a new hard drive and put it in there, you have an external hard drive. I've been wanting one anyway so maybe I will get a new drive to put in the enclosure. It'll be cheaper than buying an actual external hard drive.
2. If your hard drive is shot, putting it in the freezer overnight will give it a few more hours, and you can back up your data. No, I didn't try this, it's a piece of computer folklore that our technician at work told me about.
3. If you are a writer and have stories on your hard drive, back them up with obsessive frequency.
Now, I think, I owe him lunch or something, because he took a lot of trouble over my laptop, and would have been willing to recover some of the data for just the price of the disks he wrote it to if it came to that.
