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Post by markcbrown on Apr 14, 2021 2:56:26 GMT
It looks like the sun has set on my laptop. All my work. Years of work. Writing and art are trapped in my dead laptop. It won't start after a normal shutdown.
I'm at a loss of what to do. But I'm breathing and keeping calm. As far as I know the hdd is not corrupt so I could possibly salvage the doc on it. But the only other lt I have is archaic. Like it takes 10 Mins to start up. And it very very slow to really do anything.
Hopefully it'll come back to life.
Not what I needed.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 14, 2021 5:18:36 GMT
It looks like the sun has set on my laptop. All my work. Years of work. Writing and art are trapped in my dead laptop. It won't start after a normal shutdown. I'm at a loss of what to do. But I'm breathing and keeping calm. As far as I know the hdd is not corrupt so I could possibly salvage the doc on it. But the only other lt I have is archaic. Like it takes 10 Mins to start up. And it very very slow to really do anything. Hopefully it'll come back to life. Not what I needed. I am so sorry to hear that Mark. It's a fear I have . When my son was living in England he took care of my computer. He stored my art files on discs (I think that's what he called it) but now he's living in the USA my computer isn't doing so well and I fear for my files. I hope your laptop comes back to life, GOOD LUCK. |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 14, 2021 5:32:39 GMT
It looks like the sun has set on my laptop. All my work. Years of work. Writing and art are trapped in my dead laptop. It won't start after a normal shutdown. I'm at a loss of what to do. But I'm breathing and keeping calm. As far as I know the hdd is not corrupt so I could possibly salvage the doc on it. But the only other lt I have is archaic. Like it takes 10 Mins to start up. And it very very slow to really do anything. Hopefully it'll come back to life. Not what I needed. It's happened to me. Twice. Now I send backups to Google Drive. I pay a small fee for extra storage. A hard lesson. I feel for you. |
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Post by Ken on Apr 14, 2021 6:51:02 GMT
1. Power on and keep tapping the F8 key to produce this screen  Then select Safe Mode 2. If it has a CD drive then you could reboot from that with a Windows Master. 3. What make/model laptop? ’ |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 14, 2021 10:55:42 GMT
If the laptop is indeed stone cold dead but you reckon the Hard Drive is OK then you should be able to remove the drive pretty easily, it usually just pulls out after you've undone a few of the case screws to get access to it.
You can then take the drive and slide it into an external USB caddie, these are just cheap boxes with a bit of electronics which will house the drive and turn it into the equivalent of a portable Hard Drive that you buy in the shops. Just identify the type of drive connector and what size it is then search Amazon\eBay for 'USB external caddie' and pick the right one for the drive. These caddies start around the £5\$10 mark
You can then plug this caddie into anything that will accept a USB - desktop, laptop, tablet, phone, TV box - and get access to all your files.
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Post by ronmiller on Apr 14, 2021 12:00:02 GMT
My condolences!
After something similar happened years ago I keep files backed up on three different external hard drives.
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Post by BlueAndGold on Apr 14, 2021 12:16:50 GMT
Thumb drives are really, really, really, cheap insurance.
Every important creative file I have is on my key ring, in my pocket, at all times.
Additional backups are stored in secure locations elsewhere.
If a computer dies (and they do) I am up and running on any other machine in minutes / seconds.
And no, I would never pay anyone to store files for me on their servers I have no physical access to.
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Post by Retread-Retired-Cameron on Apr 14, 2021 12:34:17 GMT
I have one external drive [currently] and a few files I need to backup. I've pulled hard drives from old computers that died and recovered files before. My plan is to get a new terabyte external for the home network.
With external drives and USB flash drives over the last few years the cost has gone down a lot for external storage.
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Post by thunderguy on Apr 14, 2021 14:21:39 GMT
If all else fails, there is another trick to give a go. On your other laptop or borrowed computer with a relatively fast connection, download (for free) Ubuntu (Ubuntu.com) which is a Linux operating system. What you will download is an ISO file, which is sort of like a zipped or rar file in that it is a single file that contains the operating system. Depending on how old your computer is, you may need to use an older version of Ubuntu. I did this with an Acer Aspire 4720z, which is about 15 years old. As I recall I had to start with version 12, and was able to update it to version 14.04 LTS. It really works well now; I've upgraded the wifi card and bought a new battery. It won't stream services like Netflix, but it does work with Photopea and the Linux version of Open Office, so for the basic needs it's quite a neat OS and relatively speedy!
Anyway, with the ISO file downloaded you can create an install/start-up disk using a free program like Img Burn. Again depending on the age of your computer, you might be able to create a boot USB stick, but I've never been able to get that to work. Once you have a boot disk, put it in your laptop's cd/dvd drive and power it up. You will likely have to enter BIOS or Startup Mode, which varies from computer to computer, it might be ESC, DEL, F11. Once there you can select what media to boot from (like CD).
Booting from a CD is quite a bit slower than booting from your laptop. Your laptop's hard drive is probably 5400 RPM, while some CD players are less than 500. So patience is key.
Once you finally get a start-up screen you have the option of installing to your hard drive or continuing to boot from disk. I think you can install alongside your regular OS, but personally I think that might be a bad idea. Continue to boot from the CD is my advice. Again, patience.
Then after answering a question or two, your laptop should be up and running, complete with Mozilla Firefox as your browser, and you can see your other devices on the bar to the left. This is where you can transfer your files to a USB stick, an external hard drive, or upload to Dropbox or similar web-based archive services.
There are other Linux OS, once again, depending on the age and make of your computer, which may also work in a smaller form factor. Ubuntu is the only one I have used successfully. If this is of any interest to you and you have any questions I'm happy to assist, but it's fairly simple and booting from CD won't affect your data.
Best of luck!
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Post by thunderguy on Apr 14, 2021 14:37:43 GMT
It looks like the sun has set on my laptop. All my work. Years of work. Writing and art are trapped in my dead laptop. It won't start after a normal shutdown. I'm at a loss of what to do. But I'm breathing and keeping calm. As far as I know the hdd is not corrupt so I could possibly salvage the doc on it. But the only other lt I have is archaic. Like it takes 10 Mins to start up. And it very very slow to really do anything. Hopefully it'll come back to life. Not what I needed. I am so sorry to hear that Mark. It's a fear I have . When my son was living in England he took care of my computer. He stored my art files on discs (I think that's what he called it) but now he's living in the USA my computer isn't doing so well and I fear for my files. I hope your laptop comes back to life, GOOD LUCK. It's never too late larika! Depending on the size of your files you may be able to back them up to a simple USB flash drive. U.S. prices for a 1 TB USB drive are less than $50, 2 TB external hard drives less than $70. And there's Google Drive, and Dropbox offers 2 GB for free, but that's not much for most of us. In my 20+ years of using (and fighting with) computers, more often than not only two things go wrong - hard drive or power supply dies. Both are relatively easy and cheap to fix. If you're willing to chance it and have a few dollars to spare for a new hard drive, that may be the way to go, especially if your computer is compatible with the new SSD (solid-state, like a giant chip) drives. They usually come with a neat USB cable that lets you transfer your hard drive set-up to the new drive, or if you have or can create new installation files, do that, back-up your data files, and once they are secure, do a brand new installation on your new hard drive. This is usually quite easy, involving only a screw driver and some Youtube videos  |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 14, 2021 17:45:13 GMT
It looks like the sun has set on my laptop. All my work. Years of work. Writing and art are trapped in my dead laptop. It won't start after a normal shutdown.
If you can be more specific then we might be able to narrow down some possible causes and maybe solutions. What do you mean by "dead, any of these......?
- Laptop is 100% not working. Won't power on at all.
- Laptop powers on, beeps a specific pattern, then hangs.
- After powering on a message comes up about not being able to boot, read or even find the hard disk.
- Things appear to be working but OS won't even start to load.
- After seeming to be loading OS the computer resets itself and goes through the same thing over and over.
- OS starts loading but stops halfway through and everything locks up.
- OS starts loading but halfway through the computer totally powers itself off
Or something else?
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Post by JesusNinja on Apr 14, 2021 21:42:54 GMT
It looks like the sun has set on my laptop. All my work. Years of work. Writing and art are trapped in my dead laptop. It won't start after a normal shutdown. I'm at a loss of what to do. But I'm breathing and keeping calm. As far as I know the hdd is not corrupt so I could possibly salvage the doc on it. But the only other lt I have is archaic. Like it takes 10 Mins to start up. And it very very slow to really do anything. Hopefully it'll come back to life. Not what I needed. Laptops are very bad to slow down over time. The more files and changes that get done for example deleting or moving files etc. Eventually all of this slows down a PC. Also using certain versions of Windows might make it load slow as sometimes the laptop doesn't have enough ram or fast enough processor. Just in case you could try what I do. I bought a terabyte external drive that hooks up to my desktop by USB. Or as someone suggested buy a thumb drive and backup all of your documents. After backing everything up, you might do a system reset which would put everything back the way it was when it was new. This will speed it up some. Or download a free PC cleaners such as Privacy Eraser. This will clean out old caches , cookies, and files your PC keeps over time which will also slow it down. I use it on my PC each day. Runs like a top. I've had this happen even on my desktop. Twice a year I back up everything and do a fresh install of windows and other software. Then re add the backup ed documents. If you do decide to do a factory reset make sure you've back up everything you need to keep as it will be gone. Most laptops have a button or small pinhole that has a button to push to do factory reset. This is a last resort of course and at your own risk. I did this for my stepmom's laptop. It works. |
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Post by markcbrown on Apr 14, 2021 22:04:04 GMT
Thank you everyone for all your suggestions and support. The laptop didn't boot, nada. I stripped it down. Took everything off and noticed the keyboard connection had a tear in the stripfilm. I have no idea how this happened, although I did notice a few keys not working any more. I believe the tear caused a surge or power blip of some kind causing a total shutdown of power. I did some testing, nothing is fried. Tho the hdd now has some issues. Currently using old ancient lt to repair it. I found most of the files. Backing them up as I type. I tend to clean it insides, even tho I think I've broken the clips that hold it together, the screws still do their job. It's taken me all day, but I believe I have made progress.  Lesson well learned. Backup, backup, and backup your files. A new day dawns. |
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Post by potet on Apr 14, 2021 22:04:18 GMT
After I day's work, I archive everything new on my external hard drive.
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Post by Retread-Retired-Cameron on Apr 14, 2021 23:01:20 GMT
Thank you everyone for all your suggestions and support. The laptop didn't boot, nada. I stripped it down. Took everything off and noticed the keyboard connection had a tear in the stripfilm. I have no idea how this happened, although I did notice a few keys not working any more. I believe the tear caused a surge or power blip of some kind causing a total shutdown of power. I did some testing, nothing is fried. Tho the hdd now has some issues. Currently using old ancient lt to repair it. I found most of the files. Backing them up as I type. I tend to clean it insides, even tho I think I've broken the clips that hold it together, the screws still do their job. It's taken me all day, but I believe I have made progress. Lesson well learned. Backup, backup, and backup your files. A new day dawns. One place to get external drives on a budget in the US is Tiger Direct, which also offers some new computers as well as refurbished [some have two year warranties]. It's a decent alternative for those of us used to working on a near poverty-line budget.
Tiger Direct also sells thumb drives among other things. Whichever vendor you choose as others have noted, have a backup of the backup.
Good to hear you found most of your files so far, and with some luck you'll find the rest.
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