Topic: darn sister... always breaking things ARG

[Tus-XC]

So my sister manages to break her computer... again...

Something is keeping the compute from starting up the explorer.exe ... so i go to the microsoft site, find what could cause, follow their instructions... still nada.

To make matters worse i can't simply stick the repair disk that came w/ her computer as it will format it loosing all data... so me and my bro (as now its a long distance attempt at fixing it) are attempting to back it up.  this is where it gets fun. 

This lappy doesn't seem to nativly support external hd, i dont' know if its normal, but my rig supporst usb mass storage so  i thought this wierd.  however it does seem to support her usb flash drive in command prompt safemode, good we can back stuff on this.  or at least we though... we get most of her un backed up pictures (she is a photographer, or at least in school to be one) then the pen drive dies (talk about ur bad luck.... i've never seen a pen drive die...i mean mine has gone through the washer and it still work!!!)

Fine, so i find about aboiut this neat lil program called bartPE, very useful.  we get that to start up all nice, think we copied stuff to the external hd... wrong we was as we checked it on another computer.  so we plug it back in and it don't recongize it.  fine we restart the computer.... well now the computer won't load bartPE from the rescue disk we made.... but the rescue disk works fine in other computers... come to find out her computer won't recognize any cd. 

O i wish i could trouble shoot this on the spot, i think it would go faster, but as it is i had to stop when i flew back and most of what has happend now has been me and my bro talking on the phone trying to get this to work.   Right now i'm at my wits end.  I've tried everything i can think of, but this computer seems to trying to stop us at every turn.  i swear it must be posessed or something

Anyways i come to you asking if you have any idear what would make a perfectly good dvd drive quit for no reason...... and possibly a perfectly good usb flash drive....

edit:  you can find bartPE here if ur wondering what it is http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

[Mr_Tricorder]

That sounds like my attempts to get my friend's HP laptop working properly (I must have done about 15 system restores on that thing during the past two years), although I've never seen drives just die on a computer like that.  If you want to try using another pen drive (hopefully the computer won't kill this one) I would recommend using DSL (Damn Small Linux) in a similar manner that you were using BartPE.  DSL is a Linux distribution that can run directly off of a flash drive and only takes up about 40 MB.  You can find it here http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

[Commander Maxillius]

Sounds like a sledgehammer job.  Literally, take a 16-pounder and smash it to bits, then go buy her a Mac.  She couldn't POSSIBLY mess that up. 


But what it sounds to me is that some really nasty virus got on the machine and messed with the registry, first by screwing with explorer, then by methodically killing all her drives.  It's only a matter of time before the hard disk fails.

[Tus-XC]

which is why they are taking it to the local computer guy, i'm to far away to try to fix it first off, second i dont' have the tools to fix it. And yes i agree its a virus, she had just cleared one off of her comp shortly before it went haywire