Blue Screen of Death

[W. Gray]

I just recently suffered the "Blue Screen of Death" courtesy of Microsoft Windows.

I have had hard disks crash on me, but this is the first time my system has died because of the blue screen.

Luckily, I had everything backed up; but I did lose all my Emails and contacts because I had not properly archived Outlook.

I thought about jumping up to a Vista 64 bit system but I need my 32 bit system to run an old MS DOS program that I have too much time and effort devoted to and simply refuse to give it up. The 64 bit system is all one can get now from Dell for home use.

The computer repair man might have been able to retrieve the Email stuff for me but I was confident I had what I needed. As it turned out, the Outlook archive file backup was empty because I had not selected the right parameters .

The repair consisted of wiping the hard disk clean and reinstalling Windows XP. It took about a week for me to reload my programs and get the system almost back to where it was—including giving Outlook the necessary information to properly backing up Emails, contacts, etc.

At one time, I could have did the re-installation myself, but at this point in time, I am more comfortable having an expert do the job.

[srkruzich]

I just recently suffered the "Blue Screen of Death" courtesy of Microsoft Windows.

I have had hard disks crash on me, but this is the first time my system has died because of the blue screen.

Luckily, I had everything backed up; but I did lose all my Emails and contacts because I had not properly archived Outlook.

I thought about jumping up to a Vista 64 bit system but I need my 32 bit system to run an old MS DOS program that I have too much time and effort devoted to and simply refuse to give it up. The 64 bit system is all one can get now from Dell for home use.

The computer repair man might have been able to retrieve the Email stuff for me but I was confident I had what I needed. As it turned out, the Outlook archive file backup was empty because I had not selected the right parameters .

The repair consisted of wiping the hard disk clean and reinstalling Windows XP. It took about a week for me to reload my programs and get the system almost back to where it was—including giving Outlook the necessary information to properly backing up Emails, contacts, etc.

At one time, I could have did the re-installation myself, but at this point in time, I am more comfortable having an expert do the job.

Well I just fixed my computer about a month ago, i had a video chip go out on the old one. Bought me a new board, processor, and memory and went to install xp and it intstalls but hardly any drivers out there for the hardware.

Plus It'll be a cold day in hell before i put vista on anything i own. 
I am now currently running Fedora64 on my system and I can run dos programs in it too
Outlook is probably one of the worst programs to use since its a microsoft product.  You do far better to use something like pegasus which will save your emails, contacts all everything in a ascii delimited file that you can import

One other thing folks might consider is that if you run something like Fedora, theres a replacement program for almost every microsoft program out there and the programs are free. No charge, whatsoever!!!

I do system builds and repairs too for follks.  I have done hard disk recovery since 1980's back when we had the ole MFM drives. 

One thing to consider though backup onto a USB flash drive, I get them for about 5 - 10 bucks for a 4 gig flash and replace them every year or two.  their cheap and efficient.

[patyrn]

Our son has been pushing us to get everything backed up on a flash drive.  They are pretty inexpensive and can preserve LOTS of information.  I would certainly hate to lose my genealogy information and old photos that are saved.

[srkruzich]

Our son has been pushing us to get everything backed up on a flash drive.  They are pretty inexpensive and can preserve LOTS of information.  I would certainly hate to lose my genealogy information and old photos that are saved.

uhmm
my uncles geneology database is around 100 gb.  You really need to back up the database to a permanent solution like a dvd.  You can still lose the information on a flash drive if it encounters magnet or magnetism as well as if the battery dies in the flash drive.

I would use the flash drive for fast backups and temp backups.
But for things like you have i would definately go with a perm solution.

one other way you can back up is to get a hard drive thats in a external enclosure that you can plug into a usb port.  AS long as you don't encounter magnets, or extreme temps, that hard drive will last for a long long time.  YOu can back up data to it and store in a safe or somehwere safe.

And as cheap as hard drives are you can't really go wrong.   I can get 1 tb enclosed drives for 100 bucks

[W. Gray]

I started using Outlook in my working days and have never had a problem with it—other than when, as in this case, I did not properly follow instructions.

Everyone has their favorites, though.

According to a Softpedia website, Microsoft Windows runs 97 percent of the world's computers and 3 percent runs with Mac.

The worst Microsoft system was Windows Me.

Windows 7 is supposed to be out later this year or early next and is supposed to be an improvement over Vista.

Nevertheless, one could make the observation that Microsoft appears to be in a slow process of being an excellent example of the Peter Principle.

[srkruzich]

I started using Outlook in my working days and have never had a problem with it—other than when, as in this case, I did not properly follow instructions.

Everyone has their favorites, though.

According to a Softpedia website, Microsoft Windows runs 97 percent of the world's computers and 3 percent runs with Mac.

The worst Microsoft system was Windows Me.

Windows 7 is supposed to be out later this year or early next and is supposed to be an improvement over Vista.

Nevertheless, one could make the observation that Microsoft appears to be in a slow process of being an excellent example of the Peter Principle.

Years ago, IBM was the big dog in that fight.  In early 80's they released a new product called the pc jr.  They had written a program called dos which was cobbled up from a old operating system called CP/M which was ported over from Unix. 
Gates came along and bought the rights of dos and thats how he became top dog.
Now Microsoft has come full circle of its predecessor IBM.  I think Unix/linux is about to overthrow the king of software.

As far as computers and OS's, Unix is used 99% in business applications.  Windows is used only to connect to Unix machines.  I have been using Unix since 93 i think, when linus torvald released slackware unix.

[Sarah]

I just recently suffered the "Blue Screen of Death" courtesy of Microsoft Windows.

I have had hard disks crash on me, but this is the first time my system has died because of the blue screen.

Luckily, I had everything backed up; but I did lose all my Emails and contacts because I had not properly archived Outlook.

I thought about jumping up to a Vista 64 bit system but I need my 32 bit system to run an old MS DOS program that I have too much time and effort devoted to and simply refuse to give it up. The 64 bit system is all one can get now from Dell for home use.

The computer repair man might have been able to retrieve the Email stuff for me but I was confident I had what I needed. As it turned out, the Outlook archive file backup was empty because I had not selected the right parameters .

The repair consisted of wiping the hard disk clean and reinstalling Windows XP. It took about a week for me to reload my programs and get the system almost back to where it was—including giving Outlook the necessary information to properly backing up Emails, contacts, etc.

At one time, I could have did the re-installation myself, but at this point in time, I am more comfortable having an expert do the job.

Well I just fixed my computer about a month ago, i had a video chip go out on the old one. Bought me a new board, processor, and memory and went to install xp and it intstalls but hardly any drivers out there for the hardware.

Plus It'll be a cold day in hell before i put vista on anything i own. 
I am now currently running Fedora64 on my system and I can run dos programs in it too
Outlook is probably one of the worst programs to use since its a microsoft product.  You do far better to use something like pegasus which will save your emails, contacts all everything in a ascii delimited file that you can import

One other thing folks might consider is that if you run something like Fedora, theres a replacement program for almost every microsoft program out there and the programs are free. No charge, whatsoever!!!

I do system builds and repairs too for follks.  I have done hard disk recovery since 1980's back when we had the ole MFM drives. 

One thing to consider though backup onto a USB flash drive, I get them for about 5 - 10 bucks for a 4 gig flash and replace them every year or two.  their cheap and efficient.

I do have to say that you did a WONDERFUL job bringing our computer back from the dead and recovering everything off a dead drive and making it so that won't happen again.  I thought for sure I had lost all my pictures and all my graphics.  You did absolutely wonderful work and I can't thank you enough!!!!     

[Teresa]

The Black Box ( external hard drives) is the way we go.. BUT.. be very careful and do not allow it to fall, bump or jar it as it is transferring.
We traveled with one of them and since both of us work from the motel room on data after shoots, Kjell was using the desk and I was using the bed with my laptop. I was transferring all my work from the day from my camera to the laptop to the Black Box which was sitting on the nightstand. As it was running, I moved my laptop over so I could stand up and it knocked the Box off the stand. I screamed and grabbed it up... but too late. It was making this horrible ticking sound and wouldn't work for the rest of the trip. I was sick to my stomach! All of 2007 videos.. interviews... still shots... and ALL my personal pictures and data for the year was in that little black box. ( This happened in December  )

When we got home, Kjell found the best data recovering people in the U States..( Best Buy said that they didn't have the equipment or the brain power and expertise to mess with it) and for a tune of $1,000.00 , they would start on it.
We had no choice.. but after a year later.. they can not get it recovered. 

They said that they could possibly take it to the next step and send it in to the institution that recovers data for the FBI.. but that was goignt o get into the $5-10,000 range and that was out of the question...............

so be very careful when using them and don't bump it. We still use them and they hold a huge amount of data.

[srkruzich]

The Black Box ( external hard drives) is the way we go.. BUT.. be very careful and do not allow it to fall, bump or jar it as it is transferring.
We traveled with one of them and since both of us work from the motel room on data after shoots, Kjell was using the desk and I was using the bed with my laptop. I was transferring all my work from the day from my camera to the laptop to the Black Box which was sitting on the nightstand. As it was running, I moved my laptop over so I could stand up and it knocked the Box off the stand. I screamed and grabbed it up... but too late. It was making this horrible ticking sound and wouldn't work for the rest of the trip. I was sick to my stomach! All of 2007 videos.. interviews... still shots... and ALL my personal pictures and data for the year was in that little black box. ( This happened in December  )

When we got home, Kjell found the best data recovering people in the U States..( Best Buy said that they didn't have the equipment or the brain power and expertise to mess with it) and for a tune of $1,000.00 , they would start on it.
We had no choice.. but after a year later.. they can not get it recovered. 

They said that they could possibly take it to the next step and send it in to the institution that recovers data for the FBI.. but that was goignt o get into the $5-10,000 range and that was out of the question...............

so be very careful when using them and don't bump it. We still use them and they hold a huge amount of data.

It's possible to recover them, and yes it would cost some money to recover them.  You have a problem with each drive because dropping them probably crashed the heads.   The only way to recover them would be to find identical drives and move the disks to the new drives with new heads.  it would be iffy too to get the data off because theres scratches on those disks and that would probably crash the heads.
I have built a clean box before and done this very thing back in 1996 and recovered a professor from UGA's research off of his drive.  I think i got like 80% off the drive.   The cost usually runs about 1 dollar per 100 megs these days. 

I would say that pretty soon you should be able to get flash drives in the 100 gig range and that would be awesome for what you do but right now i know you can get them in the 64 gig storage capacity.  They make static ram drives that are high capacity so you might consider one of those.  I know that the laptop drives have the ability to survive a fall so you could stack several of those in a black box and they would be safer for travelling.

[Warph]

drives. 

One thing to consider though backup onto a USB flash drive, I get them for about 5 - 10 bucks for a 4 gig flash and replace them every year or two.  their cheap and efficient.

OfficeMax has Verbatim 16gb UBS Flash Drives on sale right now at $39.99 if anybody's interested.  They normally go for $80 bucks.  Sold me on the price.