Well I fixed it Old School style

Rob Keeble

Member
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Location
GTA Ontario Canada
Hi All

Well the past two weeks have been a trying time for me. Came back from vacation and had my main computer pack up on me. Good old windows. I nearly pulled the trigger on getting a Mac but did not want to shell out for it right now. So after messing for the first week with all sorts of "recovery" programs, I capitulated and took it into the guys i bought it from. Figured they would have a few more diagnostic programs than me.

Even though i had backups i did not want to reinstall for a multitude of reasons. So i let them have it for the week, they were hung up with all the back to school work. So then they call me Thursday and say nah after trying everything they cannot repair it. Will have to wipe. Now I had to pay $70 up front for these diagnostics and was very upset when they said its a wipe.

So i decided not to go ahead and collected the machine.

Then i got down and dirty and hung some umbilical cords to this machine from an old one and got into command prompt and recalled my Dos days.

Few hours later after using disk doctor to find a file and doing an Xcopy and a few other things I had recovered my all important files. Then i decided ok now lets do the final stage and ran chdsk in repair mode.
Voila, fixed the whole mess up. So much for all the Windows recovery and repair operating system programs and so much for the supposed tech guys.

Well I am only too happy to be back. Lots and lots of catching up to do.
Hey I am so proud that at 52 I can still fix things that 23 year techs cannot do.:D Teach them young uns a lesson or two Eh!

Cheers . Great weekend to all.:thumb:
 
Rob, Old school? Nope just cheap!!:rofl::rofl::rofl:
I can nail shoes on my horse's hooves, but don't know diddly about this computer thing I have learned to utilize and broaden my friendship base. Good on you, but would be as lost as Dorothy was in Oz!!!!!!!
 
Hey Don I am pre dos age. I still go back to octal and assmbler programming. I still remember what a nibble is and thats computer jargon for those that think otherwise.:rofl::rofl:

Mr Green ( AKA Jonathan ) I did not do it for the cheapness trust me I would have happily paid if the idiots could have done the job. I was just determined that it could be fixed instead of the easy route they all take. Yeah I know I know I am going to get blasted about the economics of it all.:rofl::rofl::rofl:
 
No blasting here, pure unadulterated respect. Electronics was never in my bag of tricks nor interest. (I hate getting shocked!) Their philosophy is more than part and parcel of our throw away society's problem. Easy to say, "I can't fix it, $70.00 please!" Used to be, can't fix it, no bill. If I couldn't shoe a horse, couldn't get paid, not even for the effort (back in the '70's). Working on electronics is just magic for me, watts, amps, ohms, :dunno::dunno: they just give me a headache :doh::doh:!!!
 
I was wondering where you'd been Rob. Glad to see you got the problem sussed out. What are the odds those computer "techs" have never actually seen a DOS prompt?
 
H


Hey I am so proud that at 52 I can still fix things that 23 year techs cannot do.

Good for you Rob! you don't need those techkies...

On the other hand I would say that they didn't bother doing it. This era is the era of the inmediate things, inmediate bank transfers, inmediate communication, inmediate or quick repairs, quick, quick, quick.
If anything is broken is changed not repaired, many items are already designed and produced so that they can't be dissasembled and fixed.

When something needs more effort or patience to be fixed is discarded inmediately.
And the worst thing is that we are part of it, how long did it take to fix it Rob? If they had taken the same time and charged you accordingly would you have paid it? Maybe yes but the other way, charging for nothing is easier.

Oh well there is this SLOW trend going on that I hope will spread over and not be only a trend but I doubt it. :dunno::dunno:
 
Then i decided ok now lets do the final stage and ran chdsk in repair mode.
Voila, fixed the whole mess up. So much for all the Windows recovery and repair operating system programs and so much for the supposed tech guys.

:huh:
We do this all the time at the University where I work. If the disk is suspect, we pull the disk, and put it in another system (so it is not the disk that you boot with) and then run "Chkdsk /f d:" (or whatever drive letter) from the command prompt.

I find it really strange that your tech shop did not try this basic fix. :dunno:
 
Hi Rob,

Or you could have used this:
http://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm

I have used this program in all it's incarnations since the 80's. Steve Gibson is a computer genius of the highest degree and writes free windows utility programs in assembler for fun!

I have used this program on clients' machines and never had it fail me. If it can't fix the bad sectors it will at least allow you to pick off the bits you need.
 
Rob,
Good to have you back! Old school or not, I admire a man that can roll up his sleeves and fix it - no matter what it is.

Funny you should bring age into the equation. My Dad works at the local hardware store (small group of stores under a large franchise name). He is their "go to" guy when anything electronic or digital goes south. When we were visiting a few weeks ago, his store's system went down and then wouldn't connect to the mainframe - they called Dad in from vacation because none of the franchise techs could figure it out either. He had them up and running in a matter of an hour. Oh, he's 81. Go Dad!:thumb:

Wes
 
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