Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related An apology...

I accidently killed my laptop on Tuesday, this explains the lack of reading and FDK.

I lost most everything.

I lost all changes to my current fanfic WIPs since May 24th.

I lost all new bookmarks since about 6 months ago.

I lost all of Nan's TU stories that she had emailed me over the years

I lost everything related to the passing of my mother and sister

Thankfully, Elisabeth is the keeper of digital pics.

I kept an XLS file (password protected) that had all my accounts and passwords. There is a 3 month old copy on the old computer downstairs.

Unfortunately, it was also my work computer....

Thankfully, most of things where on external servers, but I lost all my expense reports for the last 4 months, but that is not the worst part.

I lost all my drive mappings too all my servers.

I am soooo heartsick right now.

James, who is not going to confess to the really stupid thing he did to kill his laptop.

what did you do to it? i know you said you weren'ty going to admit what you did, but i'm curious, and when i'm curious about something it bugs me until i find out what it is.

As Wesley said, "Get used to disappointment."

Oh, James, that's heartbreaking. I'm sorry you lost so much. You know, in twenty years, you'll look back at this and just ... wince.

PJ

Have you learned nothing from LnC, in particular Clark. "Don't you back up onto floppies." Okay in this day and age its CDs or DVDs.

I'm so sorry for you. I thought I had lost everything in December. Although my backups were more recent it still makes you heart sick.

I did loose a bunch of stuff Think of all the people you would be helping if you came clean. If you did it then obviously someone else could make the same mistake.

James, I can empathize (is that a word?) I lost a bunch of stuff sometime back, but I did learn. I have a huge external hard drive, which makes it much easier to back up all my stuff now. I just turn it on to back stuff up and then turn it off, so if something happens to the computer's other drives, that one is still intact. Just a suggestion for the future.

I'll try to email you the TU stories again, although you can get them online, you know. It's just more of a chore. Right now, though, I'm holding off because my antivirus just detected a new virus that no one ever heard of in my Documents and Settings folder and can't remove it -- yet. As soon as Panda figures out how to get it off my computer, I'll send the stories along.

Nan

Yeah, well darn if I can figure out how to do a decent job with CD's. I'm still using floppies (when I back up). For some reason I can't get a CD to take any more info than a floppy. Of course, I guess I haven't tried as hard as should have...

Yes, did you do that? My hard drive got fried sometime in the last year and a half. I thought all was lost, but those techy people were able to recover all. But I think you ARE one of those techy people if I'm not mistaken.

But then there's always coffee...

Anyway, I'm so sorry about your laptop.

By the way, what does TU mean? I'm sure it's probably something that should be obvious to me since I'm a big fan of Nan's.

You'd only recognize TU if you visit the Original Fiction folder. TU stands for Terran Underground, which is the science fiction series my sis and I wrote years ago. If you like SF, you might like the TU series.

Nan

Thanks, Nan. No, I pretty much keep myself busy with LnC.

Classicalla, if you love

I have already backed up the home computer downstairs and am currently backing up Elisabeth's computer. I will be introducing my new laptop to Maxtor in a little while.

And yes, I know confession is good for the soul, but I am willing to live with with that tiny black spot, thank you. It was bad enough to confess to Elisabeth, my father(he has blackmail material...), and my BOSS. Thankfully, that was via email and his complete responce was as follows.

Bummer.

I love my boss, he really is a easy going person. But I can see him mentally shaking his head.

I have to admit that I impressed the head techie at work. He said that he never would have imagined being able to over come the modern safety measures that most hard drives are manufactured with. And he was kind enough to enter a truthful, yet descriptivly vague, entry into the reason for me needing a new hard drive.

User accidently surpassed the maximum physical stress levels of his hard-drive.

And no, I didn't drop it, drown it, or dump a cake on it(AFV ref). And Katelynn is mostly potty-trained.


Nan, I am willing to wait for you computer to be better. However, if you are sure that what is online is the same as what is on you hard drive, then I might just go the long way, as a form of penance...Nahhhh....


James, who is feeling better, but I am sure as time goes on, I will find more things I lost.

Well, in the times that I've used laptops provided by work, I've managed to do some things to them that left the techies shaking their head. I don't remember what I did now, but I think they got tired of fixing my computer. And when they'd give me the spare computer... Well, I managed to have problems with it, too. And sometimes they'd tell me they didn't know what I was talking about because they couldn't find anything wrong. Computers...

I thought I had killed my computer in December. I was moving stuff around in my home office and suddenly my computer wouldn't boot up. When I turned it on I got nothing on the screen and just a clicking sound from the CPU. I took it into a tech service and they could find nothing wrong, it booted for them. I figured out how that happened. Had the same thing happen with a TV. One Christmas took a TV to give to my brother because it had a sound problem and he has access to cheap fixing. Its a 3 hour car trip. Well it worked fine. We figured it was a loose connection and the car ride bounced it into place.

The computer guys figure the same thing happened to the computer. The road they are on was torn up for repairs so it was really bumpy. Then I had another problem with the same computer about a month ago. Moved it again. It would start to boot up and then quite on the blue screen with the HP logo. So I went on line and they said to unplug everything but the monitor and then retry everything one at a time. It was the keyboard. The darnest thing is that keyboard is the one I'm using now but on my new computer. It just won't work on the old.

Oh, wow, James. I know how you must feel. I had some serious moments of anxiety last week when I got a virus in my laptop (and I back up onto a memory stick every few months). But even the thought of losing a few months worth of work had me praying like mad. So I can feel your pain.

As for the stupid thing you did to kill your laptop... I'm guessing you ran over it with your car (hey, that's how I killed my digital camera last year).

Still, don't worry about the 'stupid thing' too much. I have a habit of doing stupid things on a regular basis (like pounding my car windshield with my ice-scraper and then being surprised when the windshield breaks )

ML

One of the weaknesses of the PC design is that in many machines the chip that monitors the keyboard also has a number of other timing functions that are critical to the running of the computer, so keyboard problems can have completely non-obvious secondary symptoms like intermittent crashes, without necessarily affecting the functioning of the keyboard. It doesn't happen often, but when it does it's a pain to diagnose.

There's enough variation that you can get a keyboard that is fine on one PC but crashes another - having said that, it's usually a sign that the keyboard is on its way out, might be a good idea to replace it if you can before it affects the machine you're now using it with.

Dang, my soon to be three year old just informed me that I was using mommy's computer...I am not going to log out just to get the right name on this one...It's too early in the morning after a late night with the girls...

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by MLT:
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As for the stupid thing you did to kill your laptop... I'm guessing you ran over it with your car (hey, that's how I killed my digital camera last year).

ML

I felt like idiot as my computer started giving me warning messages about it couldn't find one location after another...

James

I can empathise James...

My darling husband wiped my hard drive completely a couple of weeks ago while trying to install Windows XP for duel booting (BootCamp) on my MacBook Pro. Unbeknownst to my beloved, he had the previous version of XP than required, and whammo... 6 months of digital photos of our kids, plus everything else GONE! What had me even more unimpressed was I had scheduled a full backup (on external HD and DVD) for the next day. *GRRRR* MEN!

But I guess you get that. Laptop hard drives are normally quite robust... but yeah.. slamming down right on top of them (as you've proven) would definitely not be healthy for them. Sorry you had to go through that.

Yup. Sounds like my experience as well. Back in college I had an art book (one of those big hardcover ones) fall from my shelf (on top of the desk) directly on the hard drive spot on my laptop. The thing didn't boot up and if I hadn't had stupidity-proof insurance on it (that is, as the techs told me, "toss-the-computer-to-the-floor-and-get-another" insurance), it would have severely affected my first year, since this happened right before finals. *shudders at the memory*

alcyone

The problem, really, isn't us. It's the warning labels. I mean, really! If you aren't meant to drive over your camera, they should put a warning label on the camera: "Do Not Drive Over With Car." Or, in your case: "Warning: Don't Pound On Laptop With Fist." Or in the case of my car window, there really should have been a warning label on my ice-scraper: "Do Not Use As Hammer On Window."

Was there such a warning on your laptop? I think not! So really... it wasn't your fault. It was the fault of the people who put warning labels on things.

ML

Hi, James. I'm sorry to hear about your laptop.

I know you work with computers and know lots more than I do about them, but have you tried SpinRite from Gibson Research?

I've been listening to the Security Now podcast with Leo LaPorte (from the old Screen Savers on TechTV!) and Steve Gibson, and every week Steve gets to advertise his disk-recovery tool SpinRite by reading letters from people who pretty much have claimed it's pulled their data back from the grave of crashed disks.

I used a version of it myself back in the early '90s on a 20Mb drive that sounded like it had a bouncing marble inside. SpinRite worked the first time, but the drive was pretty far gone and eventually died.

Basically you insert a boot floppy or CD and it goes to work on the hard drive. Some people report that it takes hours to do its thing, others have said the process can actually run for weeks. But of course all you hear about on the podcast are the success stories.

The podcast is also fun to listen to because Leo and Steve are science fiction fans and talk about books they're reading.

Anyway, you have my sympathies. I also recently lost years of data -- thief broke into my house and took my good laptop and one of my desktops. (PCs, I seem to collect them.) Lots of family photos were on the laptop, but fortunately I still have the original snapshots. Just need to scan them again. Grrr. Anyway, I too have come to love flash drives.

Best wishes,

Lauren

Your story is exactly why we bought our son his laptop through his university. He can throw it up again a wall or run over it with a car and it is replaced as long as he is a current student at the school.

I call it peace of mind insurance.

I would recommend attempting to use a data recovery service if the information on the hard drive was that valuable. Standard techies usually know squat about recovering files once you have a hardware glitch, and you can get some data recovery firms to not charge you unless they recover what you want.

What's very funny (to me) is that I *work* in this field, and I still lose files from time to time ;p You'd think I'd learn.

Since there wasn't any 'mission critical' data on the computer, they aren't going to spend anymore on it. I understand the reasoning.

Thanks for letting me bend your ears.

James

Yippee!!!
Back in March, I had received my just recently defunkeded (sp??) laptop and I hav made a rather large backup of most of my stuff on the *cough*production server*cough* since it had the most free space on it. So, I've lost all the stuff regarding my sister, but I still have my Mom related stuff

YAY!