Blue "screen of death" on my computer, please help!

[moopdog]

My desktop DIED it gives me the dreaded blue screen and it wont let me into safe mode, command prompt or restore to previous date. I can get into the F12 boot menu, and the F2 setup but I don't know where to go from there. All I want to do is retrieve my photos and then be done with the computer!

Thanks to my post yesterday I have now ordered a new laptop, but I really hate to lose my family pix this way. Anyone???

 

[dawson5]

Son of Dawson5 here, Just giving you what I do. burn a Linux LiveCD. You can find all kinds of Linux distributions, but the one i use most of the time is Ubuntu, http://www.ubuntu.com/ , its free to download, you just need to burn it to a CD. and then boot to said CD. (how to burn a liveCD: http://www.ehow.com/how_4443260_burn-fedora-live-cd.html ) once its burnt and booted from there you can mount your hard drive within Ubuntu and plug in a flash drive or whatever your goal for backup is and backup.

 

[MyDizneyBoyz]

Presuming that it's not a physical problem with your hard drive or some issue that has corrupted the partition within the drive, this should work.

Wait for your new laptop to arrive and use a USB drive enclosure (link to an example below) to access your drive as external media. The lovely Blue Screen of Death is usually a problem with the operating system and plugging your drive in as a secondary drive will negate the need for it to have a stable O/S to boot from.

Depending on how old your former laptop is, your hard drive will either be a SATA or IDE. (It has to be pretty old to be IDE, most likely SATA). Get something like this and you should be able to access your old drive.

http://www.amazon.com/Plugable-Dock...AG/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&qid=1317222624&sr=8-12

If that doesn't work, you may need to bring your old laptop into a computer shop as continuing to try things when you're not really sure what you're doing can do more harm than good. Folks that bring us their drives as soon as they have problems have a much higher chance of recovering than those that wait and try things on their own. (I'm a service delivery mgr for a global IT firm)

Good luck!

 

[mrskchris]

I would do a google search on the blue screen error with the type of computer and operating system that you have. There are many forums that will walk you through a fix. We have five computers in our household, and each one has crashed at some point, but I was able to fix each one within a couple of hours. It will be easier to do once your new computer arrives and you use it for step by step instructions while you tinker with the other one.

The geeksquad in another option if the hard drive is not totally dead. They will charge $100+ though. Good luck!

 

[furb & dez]

How old is your computer?

 

[MM_Bound]

I would be very careful. You should think about how much the data on the drive means to you first. If you feel strongly about it and don't have a lot of computer knowledge take it to a place that specializes in data recovery. They will get your data off even if there is nothing major wrong with the drive.

Otherwise, I would follow what Dawson5's son said, then once you have your data off and restored on to a new drive (your laptop) go ahead and troubleshoot the blue screen. Pressing F8 will get you to the windows boot menu. Or just reinstall since you have the data you want anyway.

Once you get through all this pick up a external usb drive or two and do regular backups. I am a fan of nightly backups that are kept at home and a weekly one that I bring to another location (work). That way if something happens at home I still have the data in another location.
Good Luck!

 

[JB2K]

Thanks to my post yesterday I have now ordered a new laptop, but I really hate to lose my family pix this way. Anyone???

With that said, while you are shopping for a new computer, you should also consider spending the extra $50-$100 for an external hard drive -- that way, should anything go wrong, your digital memories remain intact (plus, an external is a much better way to store "data-hungry" files such as your digital photos/music/movies, as these things will seriously slow-down your computer's performance).

 

[sam_gordon]

Presuming that it's not a physical problem with your hard drive or some issue that has corrupted the partition within the drive, this should work.

Wait for your new laptop to arrive and use a USB drive enclosure (link to an example below) to access your drive as external media. The lovely Blue Screen of Death is usually a problem with the operating system and plugging your drive in as a secondary drive will negate the need for it to have a stable O/S to boot from.

Depending on how old your former laptop is, your hard drive will either be a SATA or IDE. (It has to be pretty old to be IDE, most likely SATA). Get something like this and you should be able to access your old drive.

http://www.amazon.com/Plugable-Dock...AG/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&qid=1317222624&sr=8-12

This is what I would do. Of course, it's dependent on you being technical enough to physically remove the drive.

 

[jsmith]

Before you go thru any of that-if you have recently installed any kind of a hardware upgrade or change-remove it nad reboot. Older versions of windows hated new hardware and would often blue screen as a result-this includes the beloved windows xp.

 

[torinsmom]

This is what I would do. Of course, it's dependent on you being technical enough to physically remove the drive.

It really is so easy though. Just the 2-4 screws on the hard drive cover and then slide it out. I use this

http://www.amazon.com/USB-2-0-SATA-Converter-Cable/dp/B0018MCGVU

when one of our computers gets the blue(or black) screen of death. Seems to happen all the time to DS. I just pop out the hard drive, he transfers his data to another computer, reformat the drive and then he transfers the data back.

 

[StephMK]

I had that blue screen in April and was able to retrieve my stuff after a few days of googling all types of solutions. In our case, it was a nasty virus that got it & made it look like all of our files had been deleted. I had to un-hide files after everything else was fixed.

Also, if you get an external hard drive, keep it updated. I panicked too because I had not put some recent photos in it. Oddly enough, the external drive broke the same week as the old computer. The usb port broke but I was able to buy a replacement drive shell and get my external back in order too. The shell was cheap! Just posting to help anyone else that may have had similar issues. It was a tense week in my house!

Don't give up, there are ways to get pics back usually. Good luck!

 

[fakereadhed]

First thing to try is restart, continue pressing F8 until you can restart in safe mode. If that works, once it's in safe mode you can restore it to a previous date when it worked. If it doesn't restart...

 

[thomas998]

Sounds like the operating system on the hard drive is corrupted... If that is the case all the safe mode tries will be in vain. Your best option is to take the hard drive out and connect it to your new laptop... the second option is to get a disk repair utility and run it on your computer sometimes it can fix the issue and your computer will start up again... What you do not want to do is any type of repair or restore of the operating system by putting the original disks in the CD... while it is possible sometimes to do this and get things to work it is also very easy to do the wrong thing and erase everything on the disk.

Good luck

 

[jsmith]

Sounds like the operating system on the hard drive is corrupted...

One of many possiblities for a blue screen-the one thing no one-even me recommended-was to google the error code that is coming up when you get the blue screen-the information that will give you might help you know what direction to go in-it will, for instance tell you if the OS is not booting because of a hardware issue, or if its not boot due to a missing dll file ect-the reason for the blue screen will then help you know if you will gain anything by removing the hard drive and booting it as a usb drive, if you need to remove hardware ect.

 

[momof3ds]

If you aren't comfortable fooling around, take it to a shop or to geek squad and have them back up your pix for you.

I have a lot of pics on facebook, uploaded to shutterfly (which allows free storage and is where we get our photobooks from), and I back up to an external hard drive as well as pay $5.99 a month for online backup through Mozy.

We had a hard drive die on our main computer and I wasn't backing up anywhere and we lost about 6 months worth of pictures.

 

[buzz5985]

It really is so easy though. Just the 2-4 screws on the hard drive cover and then slide it out. I use this

http://www.amazon.com/USB-2-0-SATA-Converter-Cable/dp/B0018MCGVU

when one of our computers gets the blue(or black) screen of death. Seems to happen all the time to DS. I just pop out the hard drive, he transfers his data to another computer, reformat the drive and then he transfers the data back.

This is what I bought. When I googled the error messages I was told that the hard drive failed. Brought it to Staples to try to recover they wanted $250 just to look. Like heck. I bought the above - but I paid $19.99.

One of many possiblities for a blue screen-the one thing no one-even me recommended-was to google the error code that is coming up when you get the blue screen-the information that will give you might help you know what direction to go in-it will, for instance tell you if the OS is not booting because of a hardware issue, or if its not boot due to a missing dll file ect-the reason for the blue screen will then help you know if you will gain anything by removing the hard drive and booting it as a usb drive, if you need to remove hardware ect.

Great advice. I am currently working on the laptop that told me the hard drive had failed on mine. I paid $49.99 for a new hard drive, and $19.99 for the wires to connect the old to the new. Brand new computer for $70. Plus the weird thing is - the old drive I was able to repartition and is working fine and can use it for backup - just have to physically transfer everything. Don't even ask me how I did it. LOL

I should mention the worse part was reinstalling all the software for the computer. Took a really long time - plus I was lucky I was still able to put my hands on the disks.

Janis

 

[torinsmom]

This is what I bought. When I googled the error messages I was told that the hard drive failed. Brought it to Staples to try to recover they wanted $250 just to look. Like heck. I bought the above - but I paid $19.99.

I paid more for it too, but I guess the prices have gone down. I've become a pro at using it now.

Great advice. I am currently working on the laptop that told me the hard drive had failed on mine. I paid $49.99 for a new hard drive, and $19.99 for the wires to connect the old to the new. Brand new computer for $70. Plus the weird thing is - the old drive I was able to repartition and is working fine and can use it for backup - just have to physically transfer everything. Don't even ask me how I did it. LOL

I should mention the worse part was reinstalling all the software for the computer. Took a really long time - plus I was lucky I was still able to put my hands on the disks.

Janis

Most of the hard drives we've had problems with have been fine once we reformatted them, but one had bad sectors on it. When I hooked it up to the above device, I got an error message. I googled the error message and got instructions on how to remove the bad sectors. Had to do it a few times, but I was able to get it working enough to get the data off the hard drive. The second time this happened(bad sectors), the hard drive was toast. A computer person told me that once so many sectors go bad, your hard drive is pretty much a piece of metal. A lot of the errors are easy to fix.

 

[tink576]

I have no help for you but and good luck getting your pictures off the computer.

 

[AmandaRG]

External hard drives are great, but they are easy to sprout legs and disappear!

We utlize an online storage company. My computer crashed and we uploaded my information to the new one when it arrived. Easy peasy and so worth not losing any pics. It is a continual backup so nothing is lost.

 

[thomas998]

External hard drives are great, but they are easy to sprout legs and disappear!

Are also easy to knock off a desk or drop... had that happen once and the hard drive died from the fall.