Computer advice?

[Bob]

you can buy the recovery disc....cheeeep!

 

[Matt J]

Nowadays there are more and more gizmos where you can easily take your old hard drive and turn it into an external USB drive. You wouldn't need to find another computer. This one is only $27.00:Ultra USB 2.0 to IDE/SATA Cable for 2.5-Inch/ 3.5-Inch / 5.25-Inch Drive with Power Adapter at TigerDirect.com

I agree, start from scratch, but make sure you can get important data off the drive.

True, and I have several, but I use them on a regular basis. I'm guessing this would be a one time event for Lady D.

 

[LuciferSam]

True, and I have several, but I use them on a regular basis. I'm guessing this would be a one time event for Lady D.

For around $25.00 she can buy that USB device that will allow her to get all of her old files, and will also allow her to use that drive in the future for making backups. I also question how reliable that drive would be if you tried to reinstall the operating system on it. At the very least I would opt for a new hard drive and an operating system reinstall. A lot of this depends on what equipment you can access for free.

 

[wrobert]

Didn't know whether to put this in questions, tips and advice or here? Our 5 year old HP computer all of a sudden quit working as of yesterday to a certain extent, it was given to us by my parents, my dad could not maneuver through the XP. My husband was on it Saturday night and it was working fine. When I tried to turn it on yesterday it said Windows could not come up because the hal.dll file is either corrupt or missing. We have Windows XP on this computer. I googled this file on the web and it said to run a PC Recovery with the CD from the computer, we have no CD for it, however, it is on the computer itself so he preceded to do this and it was loading back the applications supposedly, however, after doing so it still didn't fix the problem. Cannot get to where we need to to do a system restore. We do not have the blue screen of death as I call it but the screen is light gray. Anyone have any other suggestions of anything different we could try? Thanks.

You said it was an HP, when you start it up do you have an option to go into the recovery mode? Most HPs have all the reinstall stuff on a partition on the hard drive.

 

[Lady D]

You said it was an HP, when you start it up do you have an option to go into the recovery mode? Most HPs have all the reinstall stuff on a partition on the hard drive.

WRobert, that is where he went and tried the recovery mode twice and it did not work. However, we have the XP back on the desktop computer. I came in and found the box of all of our computer programs from the prior computers we had and found our Compaq XP operating system CD as well as the four Compaq XP Recovery CD'S. The HP took the Recovery CD's and it is back up. Now the process of reloading our Virus protection and other programs onto the computer. Thanks for the help and suggestions everyone. We do have a external hard drive to back things up but were unable to get into the computer to do so last night.

 

[Matt J]

WRobert, that is where he went and tried the recovery mode twice and it did not work. However, we have the XP back on the desktop computer. I came in and found the box of all of our computer programs from the prior computers we had and found our Compaq XP operating system CD as well as the four Compaq XP Recovery CD'S. The HP took the Recovery CD's and it is back up. Now the process of reloading our Virus protection and other programs onto the computer. Thanks for the help and suggestions everyone. We do have a external hard drive to back things up but were unable to get into the computer to do so last night.

Don't forget the 8000 Windows XP updates you'll be due for.

 

[TNJed]

Just browsing the internet these days is taxing on an old computer (ie more than two years old is old).

The web is so memory hungry with flash programs, adobe scripts, and automatic video loads that I could barely turn my 7 year old Dell without wanting to be one of those Office Space dudes and a baseball bat.

I have concluded that computers, like most electronics are disposable. Just buy one that is around $700, get a few years out of it and upgrade. Regardless if it still works because the internet will have outpaced it anyway. It saves frustration and keeps that 70% consumerism alive.

 

[Lady D]

Don't forget the 8000 Windows XP updates you'll be due for.

In 2011 Windows XP won't be supported by Microsoft anymore from what I understand, we probably will have to go to Windows 7 which is on our laptop.

 

[Matt J]

In 2011 Windows XP won't be supported by Microsoft anymore from what I understand, we probably will have to go to Windows 7 which is on our laptop.

I wouldn't bother at that point, more than likely if it will load at all it will tax the processor and memory to the point that it'll be the only thing you can run.

 

[wrobert]

In 2011 Windows XP won't be supported by Microsoft anymore from what I understand, we probably will have to go to Windows 7 which is on our laptop.

You actually have until 2014.

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