Thumb drives are fairly cheap......... And easy to simply back up your personal files onto, just select from the folder then drag and drop onto the thumb drive....... Labeling thumb drives on the other hand can be a pain cause they're so small.......A power surge would have fried your computer and it wouldn't work at all unless it was only strong enough to damage the motherboard controllers or even one or more of your CPUs. More likely the hard drive is dying and it's just coincidental that both occurred at the same time. Hard drives are cheap and easy to install but not knowing if that's what it is the diagnostics could be expensive.What happened to your computer?I am wondering what happened to my sign off post last night? I worked really hard on it and it just isn't here.I don't know if it was just before they did maintenance at USMB last night or if it is related to my desktop computer crashing through the floor here. It is barely running now so I bit the bullet and ordered a new one that will be delivered December 26. We sure didn't need that expense this month but I have to have a computer and it isn't fair to ask Hombre to give up his.
Our little ASUS laptops suffice for little stuff like message board posting but they won't run the heavier duty software as efficiently as a good PC will plus the 15" screen is a pain sometimes when I'm used to multi-tasking on a 27" monitor. The only way to get it up and running at all was to reinstall windows and that was supposed to retain all my files. It wiped them all out. Hundreds of irreplaceable photos, manuscripts, etc.
But oh well, enough whining. It is almost Christmas. Our Texas kid and family arrive tomorrow and we're pretty well ready for a great time. So onnward we go.
I don't know. I have all our electronic stuff protected with heavy duty battery backed up surge protectors and the one protecting my computer threw a hissy fit the other day. I was unaware of anything usual happening and all seemed to be okay. But since then the computer has been running slower and slower, it took forever to load anything, and just as I was about to do a backup, it crashed and then refused to do a backup.
Around the same time our cable, phones, and wifi went out. The serviceman determined the problem was the wall receptacle behind the TV had stopped working. That meant the amplifier on the equipment wasn't working so nothing could work.
Are the two things related? A weird power surge of some sort? No way to tell. The technicians had no clue.
In desperation yesterday, I reinstalled Windows with the stipulation that all my files would be preserved even though they would remove all the applications and those would have to be reinstalled. But alas, it did reinstall Windows but it wiped out all the files along with the applications. I do have some hard copies I was able to make of a few files, thank God, and do have all the older stuff backed up, but didn't have time to do that with all of them. And of course lost all my photos.
And the computer is still running very slow and refuses to install any of the applications I needed to replace. It is too old to spend a lot of money on fixing.
But this is a minor problem compared to what so many of you are facing so I feel a bit guilty even feeling bummed about it.
I know. It was an inexpensive computer to begin with and has some age on it so I won't go to the expense to try to fix it since my own efforts did enough damage it isn't worth resurrecting now. The new one is on its way and should be here Wednesday. And I start all over to build the files and will just shrug off what I lost. And oh well.
I am going to need to rebuild the contact base for our Coffee Shoppers though; i.e. the means to contact you all to regroup somewhere should USMB one day decide to close up shop. I'm pretty sure I didn't have a lot of that information backed up.
$5 for a 32 gig thumb (Flash) drive through Walmart is a super great price and will most likely hold all your personal documents and photos from five or six computers, unless you have a MASSIVE number of photos.
