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Odd computer behaviour

I don't think I am going to do it tonight, too late in the day and I have an early start.

But I will continue to use Edge and Twitter / Urban etc and see if I get another crash or not..

At the least, now I have all my photos backed up which is a nice feeling, I know Puddy_Tat that only one backup isn't ideal but compared to where I was it is a big step forward. :)
 
If you want to be ultra cautious regarding keeping stuff in the past I have just swapped out my boot drive for a new SSD. That way you can always hook the old drive up if you need to find something.
 
MBV said:
If you want to be ultra cautious regarding keeping stuff in the past I have just swapped out my boot drive for a new SSD. That way you can always hook the old drive up if you need to find something.
Click to expand...
The gaming PC my son built has an SSD as the system disk.
Startup is very fast.

I am in two minds, realising that my PC is 12 years old made me briefly think of getting a new one but in truth if I can get it to be reliable again it does what I need for the time being.
 
Over the perhaps 4 hours yesterday when I was backing up my data the computer didn't crash once.

Then last night I was on the net and again it ran sweetly no crashes.

Tonight I started browsing again and after perhaps 1.5 hours I had a crash.

Since then I have been looking at wipe and reinstall of Win10 and tried a couple of options but they didn't permit me to keep my apps. The list of apps that would be lost included all my Adobe software that I use all the time for my photography, there is no way I can do a reinstall if it means losing them and they came bundled with the machine, I don't have installation disks or licences.

Frustrated :(
 
weltweit said:
Over the perhaps 4 hours yesterday when I was backing up my data the computer didn't crash once.

Then last night I was on the net and again it ran sweetly no crashes.

Tonight I started browsing again and after perhaps 1.5 hours I had a crash.

Since then I have been looking at wipe and reinstall of Win10 and tried a couple of options but they didn't permit me to keep my apps. The list of apps that would be lost included all my Adobe software that I use all the time for my photography, there is no way I can do a reinstall if it means losing them and they came bundled with the machine, I don't have installation disks or licences.

Frustrated :(
Click to expand...

What software and version is it?
 
So, to update my progress.

This morning at about 6am I ran chkdsk /r thinking it would be done by 7.30 when I had to leave. More fool me, at 7.30 it still had 2-3 hours to run. I decided to leave it running and went to work. Slightly worried about my machine I left work early and came back to find it had finished and then shut down.

Quite impressive for a 12 year old hard drive, there were zero errors. yay.

Then I ran "DISM /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth"

and then I ran "sfc /scannow"

sfc found loads of system errors and corrected them for me.

I am hoping this might have fixed it for me as I have found faults are they are now corrected.

However I was also recommended to reseat the memory chips, my box is so small I don't know if I can get to them. Also there is a power checker online for free and I might use that to test my system.

For now I think I will just use the machine and hope for no more crashes.
 
I have just had a very frustrating few days.

A few days ago (when my machine was running very sweetly) I went to start my computer and then went to unplug a battery charger from my extension cable. except that by mistake I only went and unplugged the computer just as it was booting up and it might have been starting to download a large update also.

It didn't like that and after that it then refused to start at all. :(

I tried lots of things, booting from a USB drive, safe mode, chkdsk, DISM, sfc, scanning the system part, three starts and auto repair. Everything I could find I tried.

Eventually I decided I had no choice but to reinstall windows. I found a way where it said I could do it and retain the programs that came with the computer, all other apps being wiped, so this morning at 4am I started the reinstall. It wasn't true to its word, I now have a reinstalled computer which is fine, but it did wipe the Adobe Elements program that I really wanted to keep and all sorts of important little stuff like my colour profile.

Anyhow, now I am busy reinstalling apps and trying to get my machine back useable for me again.

Hey-ho, live an learn. But really, what a pain.

:)
 
weltweit said:
I have just had a very frustrating few days.

A few days ago (when my machine was running very sweetly) I went to start my computer and then went to unplug a battery charger from my extension cable. except that by mistake I only went and unplugged the computer just as it was booting up and it might have been starting to download a large update also.

It didn't like that and after that it then refused to start at all. :(

I tried lots of things, booting from a USB drive, safe mode, chkdsk, DISM, sfc, scanning the system part, three starts and auto repair. Everything I could find I tried.

Eventually I decided I had no choice but to reinstall windows. I found a way where it said I could do it and retain the programs that came with the computer, all other apps being wiped, so this morning at 4am I started the reinstall. It wasn't true to its word, I now have a reinstalled computer which is fine, but it did wipe the Adobe Elements program that I really wanted to keep and all sorts of important little stuff like my colour profile.

Anyhow, now I am busy reinstalling apps and trying to get my machine back useable for me again.

Hey-ho, live an learn. But really, what a pain.

:)
Click to expand...

Want a job in tech? :p

Sorry to hear about Adobe, that's a real ballache as I know how expensive it is. Maybe worth a seperate thread about options. It's something I know little about.

All I can say is well done. Hopefully you've now got a sound backup strategy so if god forbid it happens again or you need a new PC you can be working again a lot faster.
 
Yes having a backup is good.

The PC seems to be running well now, though one usually lightening fast product Faststone Viewier seems to be running a little slower than it usually runs.

Anyhow a wholly self inflicted problem, just glad I was able to recover it in the end.
 
I just downloaded a trial version of Affinity Photo 2 which seems interesting.

It really struggled to open a 30mb Raw file and it turns out my machine is way under the minimum spec required for this software. What a shame.

Will try to get an installation of Elements instead. Must be a way.
 
weltweit said:
I just downloaded a trial version of Affinity Photo 2 which seems interesting.

It really struggled to open a 30mb Raw file and it turns out my machine is way under the minimum spec required for this software. What a shame.

Will try to get an installation of Elements instead. Must be a way.
Click to expand...
That's a pity, I've found Affinity to be a great Photoshop replacement. More usable than the GIMP, at least. It does want RAM. Loads and loads of RAM. But I bought 32GB on sale and have never used half of it.

Anything quad core from 2010 onwards should be enough CPU for it.
 
Hi Chz yes during the brief time I spent with the trial version of Affnity Photo 2 it seemed capable. It didn't crash my computer just ran really very slowly. This is a 12 year old computer though with only 3GB RAM, so Elements 9 yes but up to date software no!.. shame ..
 
You would have thought it being so important to me that I would have backed up my elements folder but no. I have backed up shortcuts to the folder but the folder itself isn't in my backup. What a wally!
 
Hi folks bad news for me the computers playing up again.

I think I had a power cut whilst it was doing something important with the operating system.

Anyhow at the moment however I boot it up a couple of minutes later it freezes.

It doesn't seem to matter what I am doing a couple of minutes and then it freezes.

Before I realised this I had tried to start the process of wiping and reinstalling Windows but stupid stupid me a couple of minutes into that process and it froze and now the hard drive seems to be corrupted.

Safe mode recovery mode check disk d-i-sm sfc any or all of these might be great but I can't seem to get to them before the freeze.

If anyone has any advice I would be really grateful I am going to buy a new computer but I wouldn't mind being able to back up the last month or two of content from this one.
 
weltweit said:
Hi folks bad news for me the computers playing up again.

I think I had a power cut whilst it was doing something important with the operating system.

Anyhow at the moment however I boot it up a couple of minutes later it freezes.

It doesn't seem to matter what I am doing a couple of minutes and then it freezes.

Before I realised this I had tried to start the process of wiping and reinstalling Windows but stupid stupid me a couple of minutes into that process and it froze and now the hard drive seems to be corrupted.

Safe mode recovery mode check disk d-i-sm sfc any or all of these might be great but I can't seem to get to them before the freeze.

If anyone has any advice I would be really grateful I am going to buy a new computer but I wouldn't mind being able to back up the last month or two of content from this one.
Click to expand...

There's a very good chance that the hard drive is ok. If you can't do anything with your current PC, then you can read it (and possibly use it on the new one). Do you know what type of drive it is and what PC you'll get as a replacement?
 
Consistent freezing up is troubling. It's normally (though not exclusively) something that's damaged or not getting enough power because the PSU is damaged. (it can be a fan that's screwed and something overheating)
As UnderOpenSky says, the disk itself is most likely fine.
 
UnderOpenSky said:
There's a very good chance that the hard drive is ok. If you can't do anything with your current PC, then you can read it (and possibly use it on the new one). Do you know what type of drive it is and what PC you'll get as a replacement?
Click to expand...
Hi no I don't know much about the hard drive except that I do know that the last time I backed it up was a year ago when I started this thread oh dear.
 
Chz said:
Consistent freezing up is troubling. It's normally (though not exclusively) something that's damaged or not getting enough power because the PSU is damaged. (it can be a fan that's screwed and something overheating)
As UnderOpenSky says, the disk itself is most likely fine.
Click to expand...
At the moment when I try and start it it's beeps continuously but doesn't access the hard drive and doesn't move the screen from standby. So it seems all I can do is power it off wait and then retry.
 
Stupidly I could have taken a USB stick to work and made it a Windows bootable. That might have given me an option. If I can't make other progress I might pop back in the office later and try that
 
I called a local independent computer shop and ask them first about repairing this machine, he said if it's software related it could be 70 pounds and if it's hardware related it could be more.

Then I asked him how much for new computer perhaps two gig HDD and SSD for Windows and 16 gig RAM and he said probably about 700 pounds.

However he seemed very confident that he could repair my present computer so the question is what is he gonna do and can I do it myself?
 
weltweit said:
At the moment when I try and start it it's beeps continuously but doesn't access the hard drive and doesn't move the screen from standby. So it seems all I can do is power it off wait and then retry.
Click to expand...
Yeah, that's not good. If you didn't have a new PC on the way, I'd say take everything apart and put it all back together. Cleans and tightens connections that can be loose or dirty over time. And count the beeps and look up what it means - there is a code to them. The downside is that a flaky PSU (which seems a likely thing with the power problem) can manifest all sorts of problems and mimic everything that's connected to it being dead. I had one of the epic cap blowout Antecs back 15 years ago and I'd replaced the motherboard before I realised it was the PSU. (they did let me return it) Top tip - buy the expensive PSU. It's not that much in the grand scheme of things and it will make your life easier. They last longer than just about any other part of the PC, too. The Seasonic that replaced the Antec I only replaced this year.

Know anyone with a spare PSU to hook up? That would definitively rule it in or out.
 
weltweit said:
Hi no I don't know much about the hard drive except that I do know that the last time I backed it up was a year ago when I started this thread oh dear.
Click to expand...

Well something like this will read all but the most modern hard drives.

1718375767536.png

However, if it's 2.5" (SSD or older laptop drive) you can go cheaper as you don't need to power it as USB is enough.

1718375807437.png
 
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