August 30, 2008
I’m feeling sick
My computer crashed on Friday afternoon. It’s taken me a little more than twenty-four hours to get things back up and running. I was back online briefly earlier today,then crashed again. I was stuck for a while on a DOS page for BIOS ROM chcecksum error - whatever that is. Then I found something called CHKDSK/F running - it deleted some index items, then I finally got a start screen, but one quite different from the norm. I left it open to see what would happen and Windows began re-installing itself. Do you know what that means? Everything I had saved on my computer is gone. I have no documents, no photos, no email, no email addresses, no bookmarks … everything is gone. I can re-intall the templates for my termite inspection reports, but the reports I’ve issued since my last full back-up (about a month ago) are gone. All of my writing is gone - I don’t think I ever backed up my personal stuff. Address lists and mailing labels, all of my BookCrossing labels and bookmarks - gone. Some reference letters I wrote for friends and former co-workers undergoing employment screening - those are gone, too. Looking at my blog in IE is all messed up, too - the text font is different and my left sidebar has dropped off. It looks fine in Firefox, so I know it’s my IE and not my blog that’s wonky, but somehow that doesn’t help much. I feel nauseous and lost and want to bang my head against the wall. If you know of something more productive I should be doing right now, I’d sure like to know what it is. I’m so befuddled I haven’t a clue where to start, except that I know I need to figure out how to reconfig email so I can at least get future mail. It will take forever to rebuild my address book and past experience tells me that some addresses will never appear in my inbox again, so I’ve lost those contacts. Maybe things will look less dismal to me when the sun comes up tomorrow, but right now - yeah, I’m feeling pretty sick.
Technorati Tags: computer crash, computer nightmares
Posted by skeet @ 10:43 pm • Internet; the WWW, Computers & Technology
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August 31st, 2008 at 6:25 am, valmg Says:
Skeet, that really stinks and I’m sorry to hear it.
August 31st, 2008 at 7:17 am, Flo Says:
Wow Skeet, I wish I could help you!! That’s just about my worst nightmare and I don’t back up near often enough. Good luck! If you need a good computer guy let me know
August 31st, 2008 at 11:26 am, Jade Says:
Yikes! Skeet that’s horrible; we’ve all been there though. Since I don’t know what happened, I don’t know if anything could possibly be restored.
I hope you’ll invest in a good external drive to make backups. That’s one lesson that is really painful to have to learn.
August 31st, 2008 at 3:21 pm, hyphen eight Says:
Oh, no! That’s truly terrible - so discouraging, and right after you had all that virus trouble (do you think it might be connected??).
Hang in there & try not to get too stressed. I’ll be thinking about you.
September 1st, 2008 at 4:09 pm, annakat Says:
I’m so sorry I know how you feel. I just had to buy me a new computer a week ago. Of course I did not lose everything. Did you have everything backed up? I sure hope so. Wish you luck.
September 2nd, 2008 at 1:48 pm, Karen Says:
Hugs for you Skeet!