Long story short, HP technician said there was nothing to do but wipe the computer clean, and since I had not backed up anything yet (it was a new computer after all, and I had just bought a back up drive but had not used it yet) I was going to lose everything I had saved. OK, I blew a fit and my Italian temper got away from me. Then the technician said that there was a chance - only a chance - that a certain method might be able to save my data. They sent me a bunch of CDs and DVDs that are supposed to recover. Now I just got those yesterday and have been afraid to try it myself. People at work have gone both ways. Some agreed with me that it's unlikely that there is no way to get around a password failure. The computer technician seemed to think that it was impossible if I had not set up an administrator account.
So here I am and afraid to try the remedy. I have a hunch that technician from HP was just trying to appease me. I'm going to bring the computer into work for someone to look at it. I'm a computer ignoramus as evident by this mess. I might just go to a computer store for help and see what it will cost for them to try to retrieve my info.
Now if worst case scenario happens and I lose my stored data, it won't be the end of the world. I've only had the computer short of three months, but I had worked a number of my literary analysis that were getting close to being posted. I put some work into that but I had not put any pictures or valuable information. Still it sucks.
And get this. My old computer that was dying and was the reason for buying the new one is working great. Problem was that I had reached its memory limit - limit is less than they tell you - and when I deleted some super high memory files it started running better than new.
I hate computers.
I had computer issues lately too but fortunately we were able to get into it and move everything to an external drive. Now we keep the external drive connected to the laptop and save all our files there unless they are temp files that we don't care about. Good luck, I hope it works for you. I'd have my IT guys look at it too, I know nothing about the hardware.
ReplyDeleteSo sorry Manny. I have seen my husband's Italian temper more than once over computer issues! We have an external hard drive, purchased after one of our big failures, only to find now that we can't get it to connect anymore. So, there's tons of stuff stuck on it and I don't have the money or patience to figure it out.
ReplyDeleteAll that to say, I feel your pain. I say go ahead and try the recovery discs though. What have you got to lose?
Sorry to hear about your problem Manny. I have been faithful to HP computers for 20 years and haven’t had any problems since Windows ME. I am sticking with Windows 7 now. I am also a firm believer in external hard drives. I use a couple for double backups and never lost anything. They are quite inexpensive now and the newest ones are solid state, though those still a little costly. I subscribe to Norton 360 for protection and do cleanup almost every day. I also experimented with Norton Utilities 16. The Utilities program is able to recover erased files. I use it for another purpose though to find duplicate photos in my hard drives. It costs less than $25. I had little luck with talking to tech people in the past. They don’t know how to talk to non-technical people like me.
ReplyDeleteLike the other comments above, I am sorry to hear about your computer problems. I would advise in future to keep copies of important documents/photos copied onto either an external hard drive or a memory stick. Some memory sticks now have massive capacity.
ReplyDeleteI have just shared your Mediterranean temper with my new tablet. It's new, bought in January, and has started developing black patches all over the screen. Mind you, I should not have used it to kill that fly the other day!
God bless.
Thank you all. I am going to use an external hard drive from now on. It was a lesson learned.
ReplyDeleteGeeeeez.
ReplyDelete