Forgetful?

I am so forgetful, and it aint funny either. I'm the kind of person that need a PDA to keep track of each time I need to take a shit. Ok not quite, but you get the point. Only problem is I would forget to put it in my PDA if I had one, and plus they're more of a pain in the ass.

I have a Palm Zire 22, one of the cheapies. Seriously, I'm not spending $500 on a PDA that only serves the purpose of a calendar and contacts. Yeah they have the ones that flip pancakes and have built in wireless and so fourth, but then it's really not a PDA anymore, it's a "pocket" PC. Same as cell phones. If it has a built in web browser with wifi, and I can post to my blog from it, it's no longer a phone, it is a computer. Don't let Steve Jobs fool you, it's not a phone, it's a computer. Call it whatever you want to call it, it's a PC...it's not a Mac either. Mac's are PC's, just a different "fruit," if you will.

But getting back to the point. I work for a computer store, I had a delivery, and the new computer comes with speakers which I got a phone call from my boss telling me hey we forgot speakers and just tell them to pick them up at their convenience. Yeah that part wasn't me. So I get there, set up the computer, answer their questions, and finally tell them oops we forgot your speakers, so I give them the choice to pick them up or I could drop them off on way home from work, and naturally they choose to have me drop them off on my home, that way they don't have to worry about tearing into the nest of wires to hook them up. Well I forgot to drop them off. Well ending up having a little meeting this evening and it finally dawned on me oops I forogt again, so that's two on us, and then I didn't remember thier phone number, so I looked it up and after 10 minutes of trying to remember the correct spelling of thier last name I got thier number and called them. The good thing though these people are very friendly and easy to deal with thankfully, I can certianly name off a few that would either be upset because I called after 7pm, or just be upset because they didn't get thier speakers. Speakers really aren't a big deal, satisfying the customer is a big deal, thats why the little things are the big deal.

Window XP Broken? Fix It!

Ok, so I'm going to be covering how to fix Windows XP, Vista and 7. Since there's so much to cover, we'll start with Windows XP, then Vista and so on.

There are so many things that can go wrong with Windows, between viruses, updates, power outages, and so fourth. It is good to know how to recover from some of these "oopsies."

Power Outages

Probably the most common reason that Windows stops booting, most people dont have UPS (or battery backups). Some people dont even bother to shut windows down correctly. This over time will cause some big problems with windows, and some software.

Usually there are some key error messages that usually occur after a power outage, or repeatedly turning the computer off improperly.

- Contant Reboots

- Windows Could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: Hal.dll

- Windows Could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM

- Some random blue screen

Good thing is most of these can be fixed with a Windows XP installation disc. If you dont have one, you need one, but you can also use any bootable utility that allows you to run chkdsk or copy files. But, seriously, make it easy for me, get an XP disc so I don't have to make this so long that people just get the answer from google.

You know, we could waste 2 hours waiting for chkdsk to fix all of our problems, but not this time. Although I would strongly reccomend running chkdsk afterwards to ensure that no other data has been damaged. So let's get started.

Put your XP disc in a boot to it. If your computer doesn't boot to CD first you may need to press whichever button that gives you the Boot menu, this must be pressed before Windows starts to load, it usually is F12 on a lot, I've seen F11, F10, even a few that were F8 (once again not looking for Windows Boot Options, just to get to the Boot Device Menu), some are also Escape. I'd say most are going to be F12 or Esc.

Press any key to boot from CD....

Don't look for the "any" key either, just press any key on the keyboard. Please tell me you can handle this.

The next step only applies to like 5% of you people, so dont get confused and skip the next steps, only read this crap if the Windows CD doesn't find your drive.

If for some reason your computer has to have some special driver that requires a floppy, insert it, and press F6 when prompted, this way Windows knows to load a driver. Now if you have one of these retarded Dell computers that requires a driver but doesn't have a floppy drive, you might find yourself in a pickle. So I have a cure for that.

This is for Dell computers only. This is only if you boot to the Windows CD, and Windows does not detect your computers hard disk. You might get a message like this:

Windows was not able to detect any hard drives in this computer. Check cables blah blah blah Press F3 to quit.

Reboot. Press F2 to enter the BIOS. Use the arrow keys to go down to Disk Drives, something similar, I don't own a dell so sue me. Press enter to expand the tree and go down to SATA Operation, set it to IDE or Legacy. Save and Exit and go back to booting to your Windows CD and you'll find out that yes Windows now sees that you not only have a hard disk but you also have a windows installation, and don't do anything yet, follow my instructions when told to do so. Wait that didn't come out right...ah just listen to me.

For the rest you people with floppies, make sure you load the right driver, don't load an NT driver, and don't load a Server 2003 driver...THEY DONT USUALLY WORK, so load the one that is marked WinXP. Press S to specify the driver, choose XP, and then press enter.

Now for the rest of us normal people with normal computers.

When you get to the first screen that asks you to:

Press ENTER to set up a Windows Installation

Press R to Repair a Windows Installation

Press R, then you'll be asked which WIndows installation, most of us have only 1, so press 1. Then it will ask you for an administrator password. Usually there isn't one, if there is type it in. Press ENTER again.

Now we're at a C:\WINDOWS prompt.

Now depending on the error do the following:

If you're getting Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt. C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\HAL.DLL

Believe me, Hal is doing just fine. Most likely the BOOT.INI file is corrupt. In a nutshell the BOOT.INI file tells your computer where to find windows.

type this in:

bootcfg /rebuild

It will look for a Windows installtion and then ask you if you want to add it to the BOOT.INI file, of course you do. At this point type 'y' for Yes, and then it will ask for a load identifier type this:

Windows XP Home Edition

subsitute home for whichever edition you have, not really important, I just like to keep things normal.

Then it will ask you for OS load options, just type:

/fastdetect

press enter, and reboot, and if that was the problem then windows will reboot. If not, then try chkdsk, which those instruction will be down below.

If you're getting Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM

This means that one of the registry hives are corrupt.

type this

cd "C:\SYSTEM VOLUME INFORMATION\"

cd resto~1

dir

DIR, will give you a directory listing, you will get something like:

RP101

RP100

RP099

RP098

choose the RP### that has the highest number. Oh I forgot to tell you what were actually doing. Because the registry is corrupt we're going to restore the registry file from the System Restore...manually. I mean if you could boot into windows you would just do system restore, but you can't.

so now you should be in this folder...or similar:

C:\SYSTEM VOLUME INFORMATION\resto~1\RP101

now type:

cd snapshot

dir

Now this will list all the files, particularly the registry files. There's a few.

REGISTRY_MACHINE_SOFTWARE

REGISTRY_MACHINE_SAM

REGISTRY_MACHINE_SECURITY

and so on...

so now we want to copy these files back into our WINDOWS folder. type this:

copy REGISTRY_MACHINE_SOFTWARE C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM

and it will ask you are you sure, and yes we're sure. Do this for each registry file (hive), just change the name, the C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM will remain the same. After you're done reboot and Windows should boot. If not, do chkdsk, and that's next.

If none of the above worked, or just wanted to take the easy way out. If you're sitting at the C: prompt just type:

chkdsk /r

press enter and find something to do for the next couple hours. Now Vista and 7 have different procedures on fixing these things, so if you tried this in Vista you're wasting your time, I mean you could, but not necessary because you'll get the same results.

Now keep in mind this is for the advanced user or someone who want to try things on thier own, and you are most welcome to comment or email me with your questions. However, do not hassle me. Personally I don't care if your computer doesn't boot, I'm not your personal IT guy, so if it's mission critical, call a tech that can get to you to take care of this.

Now if you have recently done updates, particularly Windows Updates and now windows wont boot. This probably wont be as painful as the above. You shouldn't need your Windows CD for this one. Press F8 at boot up and choose Safe Mode. Windows will usually boot into safe mode if the problem is software based (becasue windows doesn't load any software in safemode).

Once in safe mode, go to the Control Panel, go to add/remove programs, it will generate a list which usually takes a minute or two. Look for the little checkbox that says Show Updates. Check it off and scroll on down twoards the bottom. Should see Security Update KB303844 or whatever, look for the updates that have the most recent install date, and you can uninstall the update from there. Then reboot.

Or you can again take the easy way out. Or if this was software related, you can do System Restore. This might be necessary because some other software will not Uninstall from safe mode, so when you boot into safe mode choose no to start System Restore, and roll back to a date prior to installing the software or the update. Not all of these things work, even a repair install of windows doesn't solve all the problems. However the more you know about the software what files it adds, what driver files it adds to the system your chances of getting windows to run properly are always better.

Now if you just added a piece of hardware that is now causing windows not to boot, well we would of course want to take it out first. If you have installed the drivers or the software to go with it you'll want to remove it via safe mode. If windows has installed drivers automatically, then removing the hardware itself should correct the problem. Because I'm getting tired of typing, but mostly due to the fact that there is so much with hardware and software that trying to go in depth in certian things is pretty much futile, it's pointless to try to go over all the possibilities. But if you want to ask me a question send it to me.

This is why I call my blog Mike's Digital Hell, because it is hell. This is why the average person will never know enough, this is why I will always have a job, because there will always be computer problems, no matter how advanced, no matter how well something is made, there are always bugs, there are always hardware failures, viruses, malware, and so fourth.

Welcome

Ok. New to blogspot, and hey it's by Google, so this ought to be pretty dogon good. Here I will actually talk more about computers and all that good stuff.

So let me introduce myself. My name is Mike. I'm a computer tech, I work on computers all day, so it's pretty much my life, at least it is right now. I don't have a girlfriend, don't have many friends for that matter, yeah boo hoo, who cares. However, I will post useful information that hopefully no one else has on the internet. That's actually hard to do these days, most things are just repeats or paraphrases of other blogs, I could steal from Mary Jo Foley all day long, though we have the same last names, she would probably still sue me, so I wont.

So let me get some things worked on and get some good stuff written up.

- Mike