Hey now!

A question for the geeks on the board.

My puter was crashing when I dis-connected from my ISP. The problem was not a constant dis-connect-freeze-reboot, but enough to get irratating, and then, one fine day, it did it. When I re-booted I had nothing but wallpaper, no start menu, no taskbar, no desktop, nada. I could get into a few things by hitting ctrl+Esc to bring up "taskman" but I was missing a LOT of programs. My local geek tried his best for two and a half hours, but, alas, it was not solved by any measure but a complete reload of Windows. Good thing that I don't use this frickin box for anything important, as I lost everything that was not backed up.

So anyhow, any thoughts from great minds as to what happened?

PS, I see that Andy Ray is still obsessing, and that Y2J is still a homophobe, nice to know that you can go home afterall.

-- Uncle Deedah (unkeed@yahoo.com), June 15, 2000

Answers

Hey Unk!!!,

The great thing about AR's threads though is that we now have a place to party; )

The Capnfun Cafe and Island Resort!, anything goes,wilder'n a pet monkey!!!got a late start opening up the joint,this kinda mornin' really was that kinda night : )

-- capnfun (capnfun1@excite.com), June 15, 2000.

Unk,

It's my understanding that there are some version issues with Dial-Up Networking that can cause this problem. Even worse, Microsoft didn't include the updated DUN stuff with certain releases of Internet Explorer (or something like that).

Ever since installing Microsoft Money, I get random hangs when I try to disconnect.

I doubt if you truly lost any data files, though. A Windows re-install is only supposed to rewrite all of the Windows files. Installing other packages works the same way; for example, I can re-install Netscape and my mailbox (with all messages), my links, etc. are still there.

In other words, a lot of your stuff may still be there, but there are no links to it, so you'll have to hunt for it (use Explorer's "find" feature, if you have a rough idea of the filename).

Now, if you format the hard drive, you WILL lose all your stuff, of course. I'd only do that as a last resort. :)

-- Stephen M. Poole (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), June 15, 2000.

Hi Unc,

I agree with Stephen on the DUN issue, at least for Win/95, not sure about 98. You should run the latest release, which is 1.3, for 95, as far as I know...

I suggest that everyone keep up with the latest "fixes" released from MS. This is especially true, after you "reinstall" any version of Win from the original CD.

If you run 98, or 95 with at least IE5, you can use the "Windows Update" site. Hit Tools, then Windows Update. The nice thing about this site is that it knows what version of the OS you run, like Win/95B vs 95A, and it keeps track of which updates are already installed on your machine. Plus, it installs the update for you! There are tons of updates, at least for 95, that were issued after the CD. New versions of DUN (grin), ActiveX, Media Player, Java VM, ..., the Y2K update (double grin), security fixes for both Win and IE, browser plug-ins and enhancements, language extensions, you get the idea...

If you run 95, but not IE5, you can get the same updates from here, but you've got to keep track of what you already have, and install them yourself. If you do use this link, be careful. Some of these updates should not be installed if you use Win/95B, and some are already included in SP1:

http://www.micros oft.com/windows95/downloads/

Unc, as for your original problem, who knows. Sounds like a registry problem, or maybe your directory structure got crapped on. Freaking windows has become so complex since 95, that a problem like this could be caused by almost anything. With hands-on time, maybe I could give you a better idea. But since we're past that, I suggest that you keep an eye on your hard drive for a while. Run a full scandisk every so often. If it turns up clean, write it off to the demon that comes in every box of windows.

And Unc, do yourself the best 3 favors that you can...

Backup... Backup... Backup...

<:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), June 15, 2000.

SMP is probably right... all of your files should still be there, but they should be easy to get to... unless you have a bug in some program that you update regularly, on-line.

Let me tell you about last week...... I thought my monitor was finally giveing up the ghost... flipping from normal to dark, and getting darker. I didn't know if it was hardware or software, but I noticed that if I clicked on Start, it went back to normal. Also if I shut down IE 95 and my MS mail it was normal... so I re-loaded Windows... and it didn't help, but I knew it was software, not hardware... so I started un-installing programs (I have back-ups on another hard drive :-) And I found it... it was my anti-virus program... I update it every 3 days and now that I think back, that is when my problem started... and their up-dates are still down, and have been :-)

I don't know what or how your system is set-up, but try thinking along these lines... it might help... or not :-)

-- Netghost (ng@no.yr), June 15, 2000.

LMAO at folks who admit to being as much in the dark as I am on this "puter stuff". Just remember, whenever you ask those "puter smart", and they try to get a "tood", like YOU are the dumbest to walk on earth, CALL their ass. I have expertise in other arenas in which, they are clueless.

-- My (Story@i.msticking.com), June 15, 2000.

No reason to get a "tude"... just like in RL, ( job wise, and "puter" wise ) I've Never failed to "get the job done"... it's all about diagnogstics...

-- Netghost (ng@no.yr), June 15, 2000.

Hey dudes and dudettes. I work on computers every day and people call me a genius from time to time, but... Don't ask me to pour concrete or reroof my house or do a lot of other things that it takes smart people to do. This computer stuff is easy.

Your probably would have found a lot of .chk files and chkxxxxx directorys after a DOS or windows scandisk and at least most of your files would have been there in those directories. I clean those up with a little patience and another computer nearby to find out what directories certain files belonged in.

The chances are that you should consider getting another harddrive real soon, altho I have had scrambled harddrives work for (computer) years, its usualy a sign of impending doom. Also I recomend buying a new harddrive cable, preferably a udma66 type as they are better made. I had a problem with a harddrive going south every so often that was only solve with a high quality cable after trying 2 other regular harddrive cables and having problems a few days later.

Don't give up on your files unless the harddrive doesn't work at all. Then you still have the highpriced specialty labs that they can be sent to for data retrieval. Get another HD to reinstall on and put your old one in too and you can probably salvage most everything you had before turning it into more storage space.

-- Just passin through (nobody@nowhere.com), June 16, 2000.