my computer heard I wanted a new computer
Community Forums/General Help/my computer heard I wanted a new computer
| ||
| so, today my mom asked me what I wanted for christmas and I said a new computer... my laptop happened to be sitting on the coffe table in front of me when I said this. Right after this short what do you want for christmas talk, I look down at my computer, all looks well.... end of story beginning of problem... I move my mouse and nothing happens... so I try to do ctrl-alt-delete, nothing, force shutdown with the little button, nothing, take out the battery, and its still on! thats when I remembered it was plugged in lol. So I unplug it and start it back up.... on start up I open blitz max and nothing happens... I try to move the mouse again and nothing... so I shut down again etc... On reboot, I see this mysterious window on a black background it says initializing windows mail, personal settings etc. I wait 3 minutes and it goes away and starts a normal boot. No "start in safe mode" promts nothing.... I log in and boom! my background is gone, all my folders and my documents and my pictures are gone. all thats left is the installed apps.... except tiny tanks is gone... dang symantec keeps permenantly deleting it. So when I open up ie (firefox and safari are gone!?!) all my favorites and bookmarks are gone.... my homepage and all my cookies and history are gone too so I check the cache and its empty too.. the quicklaunch bar reset and so did my settings for windows, my startup processes also reset :( It kinda feels like a new computer ironicly which is what I asked for. So on a bad note, I lost alll of my bmax stuff, all of my projects all of everything, but I ran some tests and my hard drive didnt fail and nothing seems to be wrong, no viruses, its not slow, etc... moral of the story Be careful what you wish for! and on anther note does anyone know what could have happened? do I have any way of recovering my lost files? edit: on a good note, my battery life is exteded by 30 mins.... |
| ||
| It sounds like it might have started up with a new user profile for some reason. Check the Users/Accounts section in the Control Panel and see if anything shows -- I'm wondering if your old profile might be in there. (You might have to try logging in as an Administrator if the current account doesn't have admin privileges.) |
| ||
| hmmm It seems like your right! wow I never guessed that I had just switched accounts, my two questions now are how/why did it create a new account without telling me how do I get it back to normal, I still use the same login name and password and it doesnt work :( |
| ||
| Backup your files and close the lid. I wouldn't trust it. |
| ||
| It's Alive..... |
| ||
| Backup your files and close the lid. I wouldn't trust it. first thing I did :) It's Alive..... hmmm I was running a neural network simulation as well when it crashed... maybe the neural network learned that it was trapped and seperated from the program and became one with the computer!?!?!... edit now the delete key isnt working either... odd another observation lol this is getting weird... windows seems different like the colors and just something about it idk... and I cant copy paste with the ctrl-c ctrl-v :/ weird... |
| ||
| If this occurred on a Wednesday (NZT) I would immediately suspect / blame Windows update. |
| ||
| If this occurred on a Wednesday (NZT) I would immediately suspect / blame Windows update. hmm its thursday here so idk... I did set up my machine not to force an update until I shut down (which I do every day) but I dont think I shut down yesterday... maybe that has something to do with it... |
| ||
| Its a |
| ||
| I know what's wrong with it... It's a laptop ! Get a desktop instead ! |
| ||
| I know what's wrong with it... It's a laptop ! Get a desktop instead ! good idea, they are cheaper and faster and last longer in general lol |
| ||
| Occasionally when windows creates an "emergency profile" for a user -exactly like James described (you can see this by looking at the dir names in D&S ie your name with an extension or .domainname, it can be an indicator of impending HDD doom. Either that or your profile has become corrupted in such a serious way that the boot up process rejected it and created a new one. I advise an off disk backup, then copy just the VISIBLE (not hidden) data to the new profile, delete the old profile using administrator(if that account was admin then make a new admin account to do it) then rename the copy to what it was before and reboot. Or just do the backup and copy and use the new one (it -should- stay put) |
| ||
| good idea, they are cheaper and faster and last longer in general lol They're quite a bit harder to lug around town, though. But yeah, if you don't need the portability, you can get a lot more computer dollar-for-dollar if you go with a desktop. Plus it's easier to get a larger display with a desktop. :-? |
| ||
| thanks for the advice D4NM4N but im no computer guru so I dont know how to do half of that stuff. I tried loging out and back in to the original acount but it just logs in to this other temporary account :/.. ill google around a bit and see if I can find a tutorial. im sure im not the first one this has happened to. @xlisor yeah thats what im debating, portability or power and lifetime.... although lifetime isnt as much of an issue for me anymore because by the time a laptop would die, it will most likely be time to get a new one... |
| ||
| In that case just make a backup incase the disk is dicky and then using explorer just copy your data (my docs, desktop etc) from the old profile to the new one(eg. c:\documents and settings\profile-name\desktop". (do not copy the whole "user" folder! just the personal data). Then use is as windows wants you to, it -should- stay that way. |
| ||
| Ok ill do that. Thanks D4NM4N |
| ||
| edit: on a good note, my battery life is exteded by 30 mins.... But that's MicroSoft Time(tm) so all bets are off. e.g. "Installation completes in 23 minutes... no wait, 3 hours... no wait, 1 minute and 5 seconds... no wait" etc. |
| ||
As always, there's a relevant xkcd comic: |
| ||
| It's funny because it's true, thanks xlsior ;) |
| ||
| HAHAHA! The best (worst) scenario is when it's hanging on "0" time left for a few minutes :D |
   |