Help! IT Geeks needed!

[Gubb]

I just went to start up my PC this morning, and it won't boot. It gets to the "Would you like to start in Safe Mode" screen, counts down, fires up a loading screen, then goes back to the Safe Mode screen. It's doing this in a continuous loop.

I hit the "Settings" button, did an "IDE check" (I take it this is hard drives?), and it performs a check, and comes up with
Drive 0: ST3160212A - Fail Return Code: 7 I think this is my C:\ Drive

Does this mean my Hard Drive is stuffed?

Anyone I can take it to that can perform a miracle on it?

[Mully]

I
Does this mean my Hard Drive is stuffed?


Yep, ours did that.

Have you backed up lately??

[Gubb]

Fuck. Just did a bit more Googling.

HDD is munted. It's been a while since the last backup.

Cocksnort.

Is there any way to remove/copy the data from it?

[Cajun]

try throwning in a usb hdd inclosure and see if that works, i have used that method before for getting data off

[sinfull]

Fuck. Just did a bit more Googling.

HDD is munted. It's been a while since the last backup.

Cocksnort.

Is there any way to remove/copy the data from it?You can copy files in safe mode i think mate if ya can get it to run in safe ! But i learnt like this and store all my important files photos and vid on an external drive now !

[Gremlin]

But i learnt like this and store all my important files photos and vid on an external drive now !
Is the external drive backed up? They are no different to the drive within the machine (with the exception of 3.5" vs 2.5", hell, even 1.8")

Gubb, depends how the drive has failed... if it will power up in a caddy, you should be able to copy everything off.

[Burtha]

Whats changed / done for it to prompt safe mode?
have you tried booting normally? if so what happened?

there are a couple of things you can do first.
1. it may not be completely relevant, but worth a try - reconnect the power and IDE cable in the back of the hard drive.
2. do you have a bootable CD/DVD? If so, when bootup starts hit the 'Del' or 'F2' whichever it states to go to the BIOS screen. ONLY change the first boot setup to the CD/DVD, boot from that then see if you can view anything from the harddrive that way first.

[Gubb]

Nothing's changed.

Code 7 is a Read Error.

I'm gonna get another HDD today, and hopefully I can figure out some way of transferring the data over.


Gremlin, I may need to make a house call as you seem to be the one in the know.

Man, I hate laptops with their tiny keyboards, I just end up mashing all the keys at the same time instead of typing.

[sinfull]

Is the external drive backed up? They are no different to the drive within the machine (with the exception of 3.5" vs 2.5", hell, even 1.8")

Gubb, depends how the drive has failed... if it will power up in a caddy, you should be able to copy everything off.

Use the external just as storage and leave it unplgged unless i'm using it to move stuff one way or other !
ironically my pc just went haywire ! Mate been sending heaps of emails lately with vids etc and ya just know they're dirty bloody things ! Had to do a restart/cleaned the browser mem and spyware cleanup , seems to be working ok atm but the keyboard was jamming on this critter ----------- and wouldnt stop RRRRRRrrrrrrrghh

[Burtha]

laptop - arg
sorry couldn't be of more help - and I'm in Nelson so can't take a look etc
If all else fails, after 20 years in IT I came to a very precise conclusion = FBH !!

[Burtha]

One last thought - its been a while since I've need to do such a thing - but there may still be same or similar program around, Partition Manager or similar software tool, if run from CD may be able to scan your HDD and check for errors. At the very least there should be some that can provide you with a report if not a solution/fix ?

[vtec]

Laptop hdd's are a huge weakness. They are much smaller than desktop hdd's and thus have far more engineering sacrifices. Never trust a laptop HDD.

[Gubb]

My bad, i'm on the laptop now.

The one that is stuffed is my desktop. It won't even boot up to be able to do anything to it.

[davebullet]

Boot it up off CD if you can, or transport the HDD to a caddy, or another desktop as a slave to see if it spins up.

At least if it spins up and the file system is muntered (ie. file system tables are gone), there are tools (don't know of any off the top of my head... and depends on file system type, FAT32 / NTFS etc...) that can repair or copy sector-wise files.

If your drive is encrypted however and the NTFS is screwed... your HDD just becomes a doorstop sorry. The other use is the powerful neo-magnets are really good for fridge magnets, but you don't want to hear that right now.

[Lias]

Firstly, if you _really_ value the data on the drive and cant afford to loose it, stop doing what everyone else has been saying and ring a professional data recovery place. Expect to pay a minimum of $1k. Try computer forensics or DTI data.

Secondly If you want to take a ride down to Hamilton in the next week or two, I'm happy to have a look for a box of something. I'm not a data recovery professional, but I'm an IT professional with some fairly highend reocvery software that means as long as the drive still spins and detects I should be able to get some data off it. Given it's still booting into safe mode there is a pretty good chance I can get stuff off it.

Thirdly if it's not quite that important, but it's worth spending a few bucks, you could try a local computer shop but to be honest alot of the techies out there wouldnt have a clue. They might recover it or they might trash it beyond all professional recovery.. YMMV

Lastly your cheapest but most dangerous option is to try and recover it yourself using software off the web, or just plain whacking it in another PC and trying to copy things off.

Unless you choose the last option, I strongly urge you to keep that drive powered off until you take it wherever for recovery, the more its powered on , the more chance of further/catastrophic failure.

My 2 cents

[vifferman]

While you guys are rabbitting on about laptop HDDs, here's summat you should know. Number 2 Troglodyte last week replaced his HDD, which was only a few months old. It was a Seagate HDD, and had a firmware bug, which instead of unloading the head(s?) after a reasonable amount of inactivity, was doing it after almost every R/W action, so the freakin' drive was frenetically beavering away. His boss put him onto this - and before his drive died completely, he bought a new one, stuck the old one in a caddy, and transferred all the data. He has yet to take the drive back to the supplier, but I reckon he should, seeing it's still relatively new and this is an abnormality.
Apparently, he was running Linux, but this may happen with other O/Ss, and could be the case with many brands of HDD. To check whether this is the case, you can just listen to your drive, and should be able to hear it. Better still, get a smart drive monitoring system, and see what your drive's up to: if it's newish, yet has hundreds or thousands of unloads recorded, it's busy flogging itself to death.

[scracha]

Don't keep spinning it up...it'll only fark it up more. If it's important, get it professionally done but it'll cost you a huge 4 digit sum. If it's not so important, chuck it in a sealed freezer bag and put it in the freezer for 48 hours. Best mount it as a slave drive on another computer and then try getting the data off it. If it's lots of data, wouldn't recommend hooking it up via USB as it takes too farkin long.

UBCD4Win has some very good recovery tools, especially TESTDISK.
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec is also worth checking out if you can figure out how to make a bootable disk/cd/usb.

[CookMySock]

Sometimes you can power it off fully, and restart, and just keep doing that.. one time out of 10-100 it will actually boot and you can grab all your important shit off of it before it hand grenades completely.

If the BIOS will detect the drive, then boot a Linux recovery CD over it and have a poke with that.

But yeah that sort of warning usually means good night mary. Check on your PCs and make sure SMART is enabled inthe BIOS - it will warn you of an impending disk disaster,


Steve

[Headbanger]

Don't keep spinning it up...it'll only fark it up more.

This is good advice. If you haven't already then stop messing with the drive, Don't try and boot off it, Unplug it. Do not power it up again until is slaved and your ready to try and find your data. Whether that's with a dedicated app or you just want to try and copy/paste.



Sometimes you can power it off fully, and restart, and just keep doing that.. one time out of 10-100 it will actually boot and you can grab all your important shit off of it before it hand grenades completely.

And this is incredibly shit advice, Never do what he has suggested, and people should jump all over crap like this when anyone puts it forward.Dumb,dumb ,fucking dumb.

[Gubb]

Right.

Old HDD has been taken out of the PC completely, and i've bought a new HDD. It was my C:\ drive that crashed, which all my Photo's, and personal files, and al my applications are on, as well as the OS.

If I can get in touch with someone with a Caddy (which has already been offered privately) can I just copy and paste everything from the old drive to the new one, chuck it in, and go? or do I need to re-install the OS as well?

Cheers for all the advice folks.

[sinfull]

good luck !~!!!!!!

[Headbanger]

You could try and image the drive.

I wouldn't though, I'd just try and grab your documents, You have no idea how long the drive may be accessible for, if its accessible at all.

If it were me, I'd install the OS to the new hd, Then install an app for raw recovery.

I'd fire it all up, and if you can access the personal files just copy and post them over, If not hit it with some recovery software.

[Burtha]

There have been a number of assumptions made, based on the fact that our friend here is using his personal computer for relatively minor stuff, probably using windows etc and isn't using it for scientific breakthrough - if we were wrong, then yes, it would be worth investing getting it to a data recovery expert.

On the basis that the problem was posted on KB, its pretty clear that it is not high value data worth life or lung - and that past experiences tell me that if I was in the district then a CHICK like me could quite easily resolve the situation without all this testosterone flying around.
- hence a small reason I retired from the IT industry in 2000 after so many years of this kind of exuberance.

Most posts here have been very helpful and shouldn't have made the situation worse, faulty heads or not.
If it was at that point, then recovery is most unlikely no matter how experienced you are.
As at that point the HD would need to be disassembled and rebuilt into a temporary casing used by recovery experts and that is why they charge the earth.

If you can run a command prompt and access the data in it this way (either via linux or dos) then you shouldn't need to reinstall an OS, or same as HeadBanger said.

Best of luck and if you need some specific details dealt with PM me.
:done:

[Gubb]

Quite right, it's is only Home data, and personal photos that are of value to me. But then again, not worth $1k to get 'em back.

I'm not too sure where the "being a girl" rant comes into play, as far as i'm aware I haven't mentioned anything about prejudice against female IT staff. I was just asking for advice. I don't care if you have a front bum or not.

As for getting to a command prompt. I haven't been able to. And I don't have a windows boot disc (It's a legit copy, just don't have the CD's. Promise), which I suspect may have helped avoid this whole situation.

[Burtha]

I'm not too sure where the "being a girl" rant comes into play, as far as i'm aware I haven't mentioned anything about prejudice against female IT staff. I was just asking for advice. I don't care if you have a front bum or not.

Oh, not you darlink ! :love:
Just the odd blown-outta-proportion post and reactions get to me.

As for command prompt - meant from primary drive from new HD you have installed. ie; you've connected a new HD to your primary IDE and your old faulty HD to your secondary IDE.
Is there anything installed on the new primary HD?

[Gubb]

No, the new HDD is blank, so effectively i've got no OS.

[Headbanger]

No, the new HDD is blank, so effectively i've got no OS.

You may want to get UBCD, It has drive imaging software on it, (you cant just copy paste your OS to a new HD,whether within windows or from a command line, You need the boot sector) You just boot of the cd, run the right app and select the HD to image, it will do what it can, Its limitations are its slow, and you will end up with a partition the exact same size as your old hd or the partition that was imaged. No big deal as you can always format the leftover space into another partition.

Ultimate boot cd http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

I haven't used it for a number of years as working on endless munted PC's made me want to rape and kill.....


Personally I would still slave it and grab the personal files (even on a friends computer) before trying to image it. A partial image is useless, And I've seen far too many HD's give up the ghost with poor timing.

[Burtha]

Dang - so no boot up then?
easiest solution without having to install of sorts would be to simply load it into an existing PC as a secondary HDD and seeing if it can be read from there.
else next option is install onto new primary - considering you'll probably want a running OS at some point on your PC again anyway, yes? and trying that or what Headbanger said again!

HDDs these days are cheap and consumable - and although in the past I've had to solder some to get them reworking its probably most unlikely that you will recover anything from it now if its a hardware issue
How old is the HDD?
I gather its a segate?

[Gubb]

Dang. Guess I gotta fork out for a new OS as well then. Or can I just download it, and use the same License key from the sticker on the Case?

I'll try Headbangers suggestion, and set it as a Slave to get the pics and personal files off first, if it dies after that, i'm not too concerned.

And yeah, the borked one is a Seagate Barracuda 7200 160Gb. After
Googling it, many people have had similar issues. The new one is a Western Digital 500Gb.

[Blackshear]

Dang. Guess I gotta fork out for a new OS as well then. Or can I just download it, and use the same License key from the sticker on the Case?

I'll try Headbangers suggestion, and set it as a Slave to get the pics and personal files off first, if it dies after that, i'm not too concerned.

And yeah, the borked one is a Seagate Barracuda 7200 160Gb. After
Googling it, many people have had similar issues. The new one is a Western Digital 500Gb.

No need to fork out, silly.
If someone has a CD, you only need your 'existing' CD key from a previous purchase :whistle:

[Burtha]

Dang. Guess I gotta fork out for a new OS as well then. Or can I just download it, and use the same License key from the sticker on the Case?

Blackshear is right - just download the software as when you get software anyways you is purchasing the license key, the software is the bonus! Or you can always go Linux + OpenOffice + Gimp etc.



And yeah, the borked one is a Seagate Barracuda 7200 160Gb. After
Googling it, many people have had similar issues. The new one is a Western Digital 500Gb.

Figured - as error stated ST***** = indicitive of seagate, can't say I've had the best dealings with barracuda, same good, some not so good.

[Headbanger]

Dang. Guess I gotta fork out for a new OS as well then. Or can I just download it, and use the same License key from the sticker on the Case?

I'll try Headbangers suggestion, and set it as a Slave to get the pics and personal files off first, if it dies after that, i'm not too concerned.

And yeah, the borked one is a Seagate Barracuda 7200 160Gb. After
Googling it, many people have had similar issues. The new one is a Western Digital 500Gb.

You can try borrowing a cd from someone, But not all OEM keys work with retail CD's.Its gets less likely depending on when the purchase was made.Don't count on it working.

As for many other people having the same issue, Hard drives by their nature tend to fail, Being a mechanical device (picture a stack of record players inside it) its only a matter of time,hence the need for backups, and Seagate are the biggest selling hard drive manufacturer so they would have sold untold millions of those harddrives, so a few google results doesn't indicate much.

Seagate have the lowest failrate (last time I looked) and the best warranty in the business,they also own and manufacture Western Digital drives.

[Burtha]

You can try borrowing a cd from someone, But not all OEM keys work with retail CD's.Its gets less likely depending on when the purchase was made.Don't count on it working.

If you've still got the case though you should be able to get the correct version, but it does have to be the exact same version.
I do mix and match mine so it can be done ...

[Headbanger]

If you've still got the case though you should be able to get the correct version, but it does have to be the exact same version.
I do mix and match mine so it can be done ...

Yes, It can be done, But MS tightened OEM restrictions a few years ago, and most (if not all) OEM key's after that point won't work on a retail CD , It was at the same time MS decreed that replacing a motherboard constituted a new PC and tried to force everyone to get new licenses.

[Blackshear]

Giz a PM next time you're gonna fork out for a new drive, I may get it cheaper than elsewhere. My 640 cost me $135 :sweatdrop

Glad I could help ya though, good luck :hug:

[Burtha]

Yes, It can be done, But MS tightened OEM restrictions a few years ago, and most (if not all) OEM key's after that point won't work on a retail CD , It was at the same time MS decreed that replacing a motherboard constituted a new PC and tried to force everyone to get new licenses.

Yet another good reason why I hate MS ! :angry2:
I have found I have enough parts to put together another old PC which I intend to use for linux only. Back to me roots ...
MS just paid better when working in industry.

Gotta go - good luck!

[Slyer]

MSN me if you need any help with anything as well.
I've recovered data many a time, including photos on an external drive from a german couple that I don't think I want to see again..

[Blackshear]

MSN me if you need any help with anything as well.
I've recovered data many a time, including photos on an external drive from a german couple that I don't think I want to see again..

You scared they might not allow you to join in on something? :lol:

[Gubb]

What a day.

Bought a new HDD (500Gb Western Digital for $190), borrowed an XP boot disc from a mate. Ended up trying to read the busted one as a Slave, but it wasn't happening, so I ended up putting it back in as the Master, booting the XP disc, and running "chkdsk /r".

After that I was able to read the HDD again, and took off all the important data (Personal files, photos, old Uni work etc.), Put it on the new HDD. Went backwards and forwards a couple of times as all I was transferring with was a 4Gb flash drive.

On the last run of moving some Program Files, the old HDD squealed, and made a hissing noise. Didn't work after that. Glad I got everything I needed from it in the knick of time.

Tomorrow night will be spent re-configuring everything, and re-downloading most of my Programs and Applications.

Thanks heaps to everyone that helped out on here. 9Particularly Headbanger, Burtha, Blackshear, Tide, Lias & Gremlin)

It's been a long and frustrating day, and probably will be tomorrow as well, but if it hadn't been for you guys, I suspect I would't have all my photos.

:hug:

[Gremlin]

you got it sorted?

I have access to sata and ide caddies... (with the talk of slaves, I presume its an ide), data recovery software, but its not a core skill as such... depends how much value you put on the data.

The hard part is getting it to spin up and get detected... Just about anyone can work after that. I've heard of some taking the drive apart, replacing the heads etc, and had success.... but I wouldn't be trying that.

[Headbanger]

Thanks heaps to everyone that helped out on here. (Particularly Headbanger, Burtha, Blackshear, Tide, Lias & Gremlin)

It's been a long and frustrating day, and probably will be tomorrow as well, but if it hadn't been for you guys, I suspect I would't have all my photos.

:hug:

And to think DB called me an asshole and red repped me for my contribution to this thread, Lmfao.

Glad you got it sorted, You might want to consider backups now.

[Gubb]

Actually, I have an essentially spare HDD now.

The one that died was a 160, and I had a 200 in there as well. By putting the 500 one in, and taking the others out, i'm left with more storage than I can see me really using for a while. I figure I can partition the 500 one up, and use the spare 200 Drive as a backup once a month or so, and store it somewhere else in the house, with only important backed up stuff on it.


And to think DB called me an asshole and red repped me for my contribution to this thread, Lmfao.
I can usually smell bullshit a fair way off. I thought scratcha was having a laugh with his "Put it in the Freezer idea", but I read that in a few other places too. Glad I didn't keep trying to boot it though, it only lasted a few times before it died spectacularly. I suspect there's no fixing it now.

[phaedrus]

good to see you've almost got yourself up and running again.
find out if your bios (assuming you are using the onboard controller) supports RAID and get it running. Even if it's just the software type. (requiring drivers in windows) You'll be needing another identically sized disk for this but if one fails, the other keeps on going.

Also, get your backups automated if you can.

[Lias]

What a day.

Bought a new HDD (500Gb Western Digital for $190),
...
Thanks heaps to everyone that helped out on here. 9Particularly Headbanger, Burtha, Blackshear, Tide, Lias & Gremlin)
:hug:

$190 for a 500gb? Someone saw you coming mate!
http://www.pricespy.co.nz/pno_8038.html

And your welcome



I thought scratcha was having a laugh with his "Put it in the Freezer idea", but I read that in a few other places too.

It's not the cureall some people think, but in certain lmiited circumstances it can actually work.

[Blackshear]

all I was transferring with was a 4Gb flash drive.



You poor thing :lol:
I sure do hope you deleted the couple movies to make more room!

[Burtha]

Bravo and thank goodness you got your stuff off.
There will be little point in saving the HD now - have fun with your FBH I say.
Hope some of my yap helped a little.
Yes, regular backups are the way to go.
Congrats and good on you for perservering. :done:

[scracha]

The "Freezer idea" has worked for me about 30% of the time....but if a drive is farked...it's farked. I've only once had a customer shell out and go for the "professional" recovery service. I'd still recommend the Seagate drives BTW, even if their warranty recently dropped from 5 to 3 years.

Go for a decent backup over a raid system any day of the week. Raid doesn't protect you from virus', applications currupting data, user stupidity, having your house go on fire or having your computer stolen. Shell out on a decent 2.5" portable hard drive with USB (320gb is about $180) and if you can stretch to it and your motherboard support it, get one with eSATA.

Backup? Vista business/ultimate does system imaging rather well. If it's XP then look at dixml (google it...it's free!). Works in home basic/premium too but you have to turn off UAC temporarily which is a PITA.

Partitioning? With XP and Vista, there's more con's to this than pro's for most users.

OEM keys...I do dozens of XP reinstalls a week and very rarely do they not work. Worst case is you're rining up Microsoft and pushing buttons on your telephone keypad to reactivate. Someone should be able to loan you a CD for you to erm...backup.

Good idea to get yourself a decent boot cds (ubcdwin and knoppix are invaluable) as get out of jail free cards once you're up and running.

[The Stranger]

Firstly, if you _really_ value the data on the drive and cant afford to loose it, stop doing what everyone else has been saying

Bingo - people who don't know shit should shut the fuck up and stop telling him how to fuck up his chances of recovering his data.
If you want the best chances of data recovery power the machine down at the wall socket and leave it off until you have spoken to someone who KNOWS what they are doing and the ramifications of their advice for you.

[HenryDorsetCase]

. I was just asking for advice. I don't care if you have a front bum or not.



Pleased that it looks like the situation is resolved.

I was really tempted to use the quote above as a new signature. Its to the point, and very funny.

You've made my night!

[Gubb]

$190 for a 500gb? Someone saw you coming mate!
http://www.pricespy.co.nz/pno_8038.html

After looking at that link, I think I got away OK. I needed and IDE drive, not a SATA, which all seem cheaper. But hey, they had a target market, and I needed it that day.

Still trying to re-configure the system, it's going to be a pain re-downloading and setting up applications, but i'm just glad I got everything I needed before it failed spectacularly.

[Lias]

After looking at that link, I think I got away OK. I needed and IDE drive, not a SATA, which all seem cheaper. But hey, they had a target market, and I needed it that day.

Still trying to re-configure the system, it's going to be a pain re-downloading and setting up applications, but i'm just glad I got everything I needed before it failed spectacularly.

Aye PATA (Oldschool IDE) drives are more expensive, but still up to $30-40 less than what you paid.

[scracha]

Aye PATA (Oldschool IDE) drives are more expensive, but still up to $30-40 less than what you paid.

Perhaps. But maybe he just couldn't be arsed driving into town or farting about with price-spy, sending his credit card (or mucking about with direct transfer) to some dodgy online store and then waiting 2 or 3 days for delivery. Perhaps he just went to his local computer shop, got some good advice and the chance to return the drive without too much hassle should he have the wrong type.

[Lias]

Perhaps. But maybe he just couldn't be arsed driving into town or farting about with price-spy, sending his credit card (or mucking about with direct transfer) to some dodgy online store and then waiting 2 or 3 days for delivery. Perhaps he just went to his local computer shop, got some good advice and the chance to return the drive without too much hassle should he have the wrong type.

2 of the 5 cheapest prices for that drive are retail stores in Auckland *shrug*

There is something to be said for going to a store "Where everybody knows your name", but alot of local stores also blatently price gouge. I've known stores that work on a 30-50% markup, which is retarded in what is a very competitive industry. You make a small markup on parts, and make your main money from labour.

[Slyer]

Christ let him buy it where he likes...

[Headbanger]

2 of the 5 cheapest prices for that drive are retail stores in Auckland *shrug*

There is something to be said for going to a store "Where everybody knows your name", but alot of local stores also blatently price gouge. I've known stores that work on a 30-50% markup, which is retarded in what is a very competitive industry. You make a small markup on parts, and make your main money from labour.

Which is why its a crap industry, there are only a limited amount of hours in the week to charge labour for, and there is no mark up in hardware, at least not enough to bother.

I don't know where you get the 30%-50% markup from though, When I was running my company the top ten budget sellers were retailing items for less then I could source them for from suppliers, and only a tiny margin of resellers were putting a worthwhile profit on top. You only need to sell a couple $600 video cards and make enough profit to buy a pie to see thats a market not worth chasing after. Pricespy is great for the budget consumer but has done no favours for the industry.

[Lias]

Which is why its a crap industry, there are only a limited amount of hours in the week to charge labour for, and there is no mark up in hardware, at least not enough to bother.

I don't know where you get the 30%-50% markup from though, When I was running my company the top ten budget sellers were retailing items for less then I could source them for from suppliers, and only a tiny margin of resellers were putting a worthwhile profit on top. You only need to sell a couple $600 video cards and make enough profit to buy a pie to see thats a market not worth chasing after. Pricespy is great for the budget consumer but has done no favours for the industry.

When I used to work in that area, the store I was at charged 10-15% markup, and was often undercut by cheaper stores, but we survived and prospered on labour charges. It's the cutting of labour rates that's killing stores IMHO.. I've seen backyarders advertising at $18ph inc travel, and even stores charging $30-40ph for labour. Back in my day we charged $80ph inhouse, up to $200 for onsite, afterhours server work.

[Gubb]

Meh.

They had what I needed, and I was happy to pay for it to take it home that morning. I'm happy, they seemed happy.

I'm not overly concerned if I was "gouged". I would have blown it all on hats anyway.

[Gubb]

Alright. New issue now.

New HDD is in, with a new OS loaded.

Problem is that the new OS isn't detecting my Router (It's a DSE XH9950). I had a look for Drivers, but couldn't find anything, and from what I remember, it didn't come with any.

Odd thing is, the Router is working, cause I'm still using the net through the laptop. Had a look through, and I can't seem to find a way to make the PC and Router detect each other.

[Slyer]

Add me to msn now. slyernz@hotmail.com

[Gubb]

Slyer, you're a legend.

Everything works!

I owe you a beer. Hopefully this is the end to this saga.

[Gremlin]

unless the router is inside your computer, don't ever bother using the driver cd

[Slyer]

He needed lan drivers.

[Madmax]

I used to do a lot of Data Recovery work!!!
HDAs are quite smart bits of hardware,
When they are made they have defects (dont we all)?
The manufacture puts all the know defects into a list on the disk
PLIST pirmary defect list
then they put aside some sectors to allow for any new bad ones
during the drives life (spare sectors)
any new dectects are added to the
GLIST grown defect list
and a spare sector is put into service,
The operating system does not know this is happening
UTILL!!!! there are no spare sectors left
then if the OS chkdsk nortons or any of these see it get your data off quick
Data recovery is a very expensive and Time Consuming job
:doh:

[Madmax]

while were at it there is
TCALC thermal expansion compensation
Zone Recording (this is why drives are getting bigger)
The fact that if the drive leaves is heads in one spot for too
long they overheat
ETC
:wacko:
worst bit is a can remeber thist shit off the top of my head
:violin: