Nothing to See Here...

[mvf-m11c]

Glad that u r going back to DL in May. Hope everything works out fine during that month. Sry to hear about your George Foreman Grill and the day at the dentist.

 

[DizNee Luver]

Oh God, how I hate dentists & teeth issues......I have the worst teeth in the world & only go to the dentist when something breaks!!! I can't afford to go on a regular basis with no insurance & they want me in monthly to do stuff.......forget it dude.......I'm not paying for your kids college education when I can't afford to pay for my own kids education!!!!!

Club 33 huh???? Swanky, but something I'd give my left foot for.......make sure you introduce us in late November......I'm sure you need one more for your party!!! (could you tell I was hinting??)

So did you tell her you really didn't want to share a room?? I know motel/hotel costs can add up but just assuming they could get in on your deal seems a bit........rude??

Hope everything works out!!!!! Oh & YAY on getting to go to Goofy's Kitchen in May!! RFC.......bleh We've stopped going there cause it keeps getting worse & worse each trip......don't want to spend that kind of money for less than mediocre food. Maybe you could just have a dessert.....pretty hard to screw up ice cream that's already made!!

 

[TheColtonsMom]

Goerge...tell me about the baby GF grill...what color was it...might know where you can get one....I believe there is stilll one hanging in my garage from when DH did the OTR trucking thing... We use the 2 bigger ones in the kitchen.

Dentists & Elevators & snarky employees...SUCK!

As for May... yep skip the RF the one at DL just doesn't measure up to the others I've been to even if you do get hungry again. Make an excuse say you will just skip in and get a tigger tail for her 4 year old... I just can't imagine coming from out of state and planning to hang out around the park without going in... weird and like torturing yourself

Holiday trip... I know you have been trying to get her out to go back to DL for a while and she has waffled so many times that I wouldn't start worrying about sharing a hotel room with her just yet since based on your past experience she will prob cancel the trip anyway. Plus if she can afford to eat at Club 33.. she can afford an offsite hotel for her family too.

I would love to get invited to Club 33 but I too would have to weigh the cost,

 

[tdashgirl]

I see both good and bad in this. The bad is glaring.

ITA. I hope you can figure it out Sherry

RFC.......bleh We've stopped going there cause it keeps getting worse & worse each trip......don't want to spend that kind of money for less than mediocre food.

Yes!!! When we went there in February (DD7's request) it does seem to have gotten worse The food was just blah, and get this - when DH got the bill, he looked at me, showed it to me, and said "This. *This* meal was the MOST expensive of the trip." That got me totally mad. To pay that much money for blah food was irritating to say the least.

 

[Sherry E]

Ugh. I swear...somebody just shoot me now. This is obviously one of those periods of time for me (which we all go through every few years) when bad things keep happening.

Between the almost 2 weeks of plumbers and plumbing-related mishaps here, the mystery tooth that is hurting badly and yet cannot be diagnosed, and a totally new tooth that is now hurting because the dentist decided it had to be bonded, and a big computer crisis today.....I am just exhausted and ready to cry.

For some reason I lost all of my files on my PC today. My computer expert friend tells me - and a couple of computer places seem to agree - that it sounds as if the system is not recognizing my "profile" when I log in. It seems to know who I am, and I am using the same password...but when I get onto the desktop and see that half of my icons are missing and ALL of my photos and files for WORK are gone, as well as many personal documents, it appears the system thinks I am someone else. My system has not crashed in the traditional sense, as I can still access MS Word and Word Perfect and get online - it's just that all of my client files are gone. And it wiped out half of my icons on the desktop and reverted back to older versions of things like Adobe Reader (which I had just updated the other day to the newest version).

All of my photos are gone, too, except for that I still have many of them on the memory cards or in Photobucket or wherever. Still, I'd like to be able to access the ones that are not on either of those things.

Funny, too, as I was just saying to myself a few days ago that I need to look into an online back-up place like Carbonite.com. This PC is so old that it does not save files to flash drives very well, and it doesn't even burn anything to CD's. I was literally JUST going to go onto the Carbonite.com website in the next week.

And now I may not have any files to back up. Supposedly, some computer places can send machines out to data retrieval places to get the files if they can't find them on their own.

What worries me is that my computer technician friend told me, step by step, where to look in this PC for my documents. She said if they were hiding anywhere on here, that's where they would be. But no luck. They're not there.

In any case, my PC really, really began acting crazy last night, after I spent all that time on Photobucket trying to access photos to post on the DLR at ChristmasTime Superthread.

See, I knew that Photobucket was going to cause me some big problems sooner or later!

Right now, the way things are going, I don't think I will be hoarding any Disney gift cards any time soon. Too many other things keep popping up.

 

[kaoden39]

Aw Sherry I am sorry to hear this. I hope everything clears up.

 

[DizNee Luver]

Sherry, we had a virus that basically took over our computer & we lost everything.....Mike found a program that you can "sample" to see if it can find your files before having to purchase anything. We had 5 yrs of pictures go missing & most of them were not backed up anywhere.....so I was devistated. It found all of them!!! I think it ran us $60 to purchase the program & retrieve everything.......so it's possible running the test will locate them. If they're on the hard drive......this will find them.

I'll ask Mike tonight for the website.

 

[Sherry E]

Aw Sherry I am sorry to hear this. I hope everything clears up.

Thank you, Michele!

Sherry, we had a virus that basically took over our computer & we lost everything.....Mike found a program that you can "sample" to see if it can find your files before having to purchase anything. We had 5 yrs of pictures go missing & most of them were not backed up anywhere.....so I was devistated. It found all of them!!! I think it ran us $60 to purchase the program & retrieve everything.......so it's possible running the test will locate them. If they're on the hard drive......this will find them.

I'll ask Mike tonight for the website.

Laurie - That would be great! I'd love to know what that software is. It can't hurt, in any case.

It very well may have been a virus that corrupted my "profile" - which is what my computer recognizes when I log on. I shut the PC down at night, but when I log in I type in a password. It's still taking that password, but obviously the profile associated with that has been corrupted somehow - my computer tech friend and 2 different computer places I called seem to agree on that, just by my description.

The other option is that I was hacked somehow and all of my stuff was wiped out.

Where my friend was telling me to look for the documents/pictures in my PC was a bit fat zero. It turned up nothing. Everything vanished - photos, personal documents, business documents, etc. Now if I have to pay one of those computer repair places just to look through my PC to tell me the same thing my friend told me, I would be ticked off. BUT they claim to be able to send out PC's to data retrieval places. Needless to say, if I can avoid that inevitable lofty fee, I would prefer it.

Before I call a computer place and have them send the PC off somewhere for the data to be retrieved, my computer friend is going to attempt to remotely access my PC when she gets home from her job and poke around to see what's happening. If she can't find anything, then I may as well try that software you and Mike tried, Laurie!

And if that does not work then I can call up a place like Geek Squad and see what they can do with it.

It's not even a matter of this PC not working - that's what annoys me! It's working, but all of my files have disappeared, and I need many of those for work. It's like they were just erased from the system when my profile became corrupted!

 

[azdisneylover]

Oh, Sherry,
I sure hope your luck turns around for the better soon. Wishing all the bad karma around you to shift off this board and onto a Six Flags Board.

 

[mariezp]

Oh Sherry! You poor dear! You just can't seem to catch a break, can you? Hope you find a way to recover your files.And, I will also be hoping that this is the last of the bad news for a good long while!

 

[DizNee Luver]

Sherry, I'll get that website & program info to you tomorrow sometime......all the info is on our old computer & Mike will need to hook it up to access it. We're taking the car in the morning to have some recall stuff dealt with, so I'm guessing in the afternoon.

 

[Sherry E]

Oh, Sherry,
I sure hope your luck turns around for the better soon. Wishing all the bad karma around you to shift off this board and onto a Six Flags Board.

Linda - That is too funny! I had to laugh at that comment! Thank you.

Oh Sherry! You poor dear! You just can't seem to catch a break, can you? Hope you find a way to recover your files.And, I will also be hoping that this is the last of the bad news for a good long while!

Marie - You are right. One thing after another after another is happening year. And it happens every so often. I think it happens to all of us - every few years we get hit with a year that is just unlucky aross the board. And then there are other years where it seems like many wonderful things happen. It's just like a black cloud floats around in the sky and lands on different people each year, at random!

I know that there are people who have lost files and then been able to recover them. Some people can't recover them, of course, but I am trying to not think of that.

Right now I am in a state of limbo. I have to wait for my friend and her husband - they are both computer wizards and technicians - to be available to try to remotely access my PC from their home in New York. We think the remote access software is still on my machine and they should be able to get in. If they cannot get in, then they have to basically talk me through certain procedures to try and see what's happening. I can't work at all, because anything I try to do on this PC will overwrite my old data and possibly cause me to lose it forever...if it's not already gone forever. I really shouldn't even be online, truthfully.

There is such a thing as a System Restore feature. I have not tried that yet. Sometimes that works; sometimes it does not. I don't feel safe trying it. I would rather an actual technician did it.

In any case, if my friends can get in and find the problem or at least find out exactly what happened, that will save me some money in getting a place like Geek Squad or wherever to come out and look at it. If they cannot get into the PC or if they cannot find any lost files, I will have to somehow get someone over here to do something.

Sherry, I'll get that website & program info to you tomorrow sometime......all the info is on our old computer & Mike will need to hook it up to access it. We're taking the car in the morning to have some recall stuff dealt with, so I'm guessing in the afternoon.

Thank you, Laurie! My computer either crashed or my profile was corrupted somehow. In any case, there is a chance I could get the documents back and it's worth a try.

 

[DizNee Luver]

Ok the name of the program is Recover My Files.

www.recovermyfiles.com

About halfway down is a download & try for free.......it will show you everything it can recover before you ever have to purchase anything.

If it finds all your lost stuff, then you purchase it for $69.95 (and it was well worth it to recover our nearly 8000 photos!!)

GOOD LUCK!!!

 

[azdisneylover]

Sherry,
I hope you will be posting with great news about your computer, tooth and Disneyland!

 

[Sherry E]

Thank you, Laurie and Linda!




Okay, so here is the update.

My friend and her husband got into my PC on Saturday via a remote access program that they had installed on here back in 2007. They were the ones who gave me this PC 4 years ago, fully loaded with the programs I needed for work and with extra memory - basically, they extended the life of a 7-year-old PC and made it run as good as it could possibly run for a PC that old. They are both computer experts and technicians, so I can get a lot of info from them (and help) that other people pay $$$ for.

These remote access programs are wonderful! I highly recommend them for a variety of reasons. My friends are in New York, and they were able to access my PC and look around to see what caused all of my files to disappear.

First, Liza (funatdisney) and her husband tried to help me, and her husband talked me through (on the phone) certain places to look for my lost files. That was very kind of them, so a BIG thank you to Liza and her DH.

All of those tries guided by Liza's husband were unsuccessful. None of my lost files appeared.

So when my New York friends got into my PC and probed around, they discovered that it had undergone a "major crash" last Thursday (though still not a total crash, or else I wouldn't even be able to get online or into anything on here).

After the crash, apparently when I turned on the PC again, it automatically started 'scanning' all the files and documents on the PC....and then it renamed them. It renamed ALL of them.

To put this in perspective for you, think of it this way - I have one client I have been doing work for over the last 4 years. Let's just say that all of his work was rescued post-crash (which it wasn't, but let's just say it was). That means that when the PC starting scanning the files, it would rename 4 years worth of work and assign random numerical file names - like 00004626 or something - to each of them.

Nothing that was rescued post-crash has the name I gave it...which means that I won't know what anything is until I go through each file, one by one, and name it. So I have no idea what anything is, and how much I have lost or retained.

To put that in perspective for you, now consider this:

Not only did I have 4 years of work for one client on this PC, but I also had work for several other clients on this PC.

And I had photos. LOTS and LOTS and LOTS of photos from various sources (some were scanned in by my All-In-One printer/fax/scanner/copier; some were from CD's; some from my camera; some sent to me by other people over the years) - 1600-ish photos alone just from my December 2010 DLR trip. Photos from my November 2010 DLR trip. Photos from years and years and years of DLR trips that I scanned in, ranging from 1972 - 2001.

All of my Catalina photos, ranging from 1988 to 2003 - vanished.

All of my Bret Michaels/Poison/Sunset Strip photos from 1985 - 1992 - vanished.

And I am not even mentioning all the various personal documents and other stuff I had saved.

So you now have an idea of what kinds of stuff was lost. Many, many documents for clients (in MS Word and in Word Perfect) and many, many personal documents and many, many photos.


So...basically, Heather and Walt (my New York technician friends) found a lot of the files that were lost. They were now saved as ".CHK files." (By the way, if you ever, ever have a PC crash like I did and you can't locate your files, ask a technician to look for the .Chk files on your PC - they should have the software to do that). But they also saw that 2200 files (yes, over 2000 files) had either been corrupted OR deleted for good. I have no idea what was in those 2200 files. I may never know exactly.

H&W ran a program to locate lost files and came up with the .Chk files - which were separated into hundreds of different groups/folders.

In each .Chk group/folder, there are at least a couple hundred files.

H&W then performed a file restore function with some other software, and that was 'supposed' to restore the .Chk files to my PC.

We got through ONLY the first CHK group so far. Heather restored the files from that first group to my PC, and I have been laboriously going through each and every file in that group to see what was restored. I have hundreds more groups and thousands more files to look through as they are restored, one by one.

I have discovered that the PC restored things in an odd way. For example, in this first group I looked at, I saw random files from 2007, and then random documents from just 2 weeks ago - and a whole lotta stuff missing in between. Plus, I am only finding MS Word documents and some photos (recent photos from Disneyland 2010). MOST of the documents and MOST of the photos are still missing.

And it also seems to have made like 50 (literally) copies of some documents, while there are only 2 copies of something else, and 1 copy of something else. Very odd.

Again, I have to go through each and every one of these found files to see what is what, as nothing has its original title anymore.

It's like looking for a needle in a haystack.

So now, tonight, Heather is supposed to restore the next group of CHK files to my PC so I can begin the process of going through those and seeing what's in there. Since there are hundreds of CHK groups, you can see how time-consuming this will be.

But if I can just find even a handful of my lost photos (the older ones) and some of the crucial documents I use or work with again and again, I will be satisfied with that. I can't give up looking until I find some of these things.

This is why people send their machines out to repair places - no one has the time, patience, expertise or energy to deal with this kind of thing on their own. Or people just give up and let things go after a crash.

But, given all the time it has taken me so far, can you imagine what I would be paying a repair place to do this stuff?

There MAY be other hidden files somewhere in the PC that are different from CHK files. If so, those will probably never be found.

So the bottom line is that many things were probably just lost forever - remember those 2200 files I mentioned earlier that were corrupted or lost. Some of the stuff is there, but I won't know which things until I go through it all, which could take another month.

Some things I can get back again - I am a cyber hoarder, so I keep most of my e-mails (both sent and received). I will be able to go back into my sent e-mails and find some documents that I sent to clients. I have stored photos in various places like Facebook or Photobucket or MySpace or wherever, so I can get some of them back that way.

But there are things that are lost forever - like a song that a friend sent me last year. And some photos sent to me by other friends that I do not have in e-mails will be lost forever. It makes me sick to think about what was lost, to be honest. Unless these lost files and photos show up in one of the next CHK groups we restore, they are lost forever.


In the meantime, I can't really work on this PC. so I am losing money. First of all, I don't have any of the older documents that my client would need to work on. And to store anything NEW (start a new document) on this PC is only running the risk of overwriting the older files I may be able to find. Plus, this PC is very unstable now. It's not acting right, and it could be on the brink of crashing again - even worse next time.

So the bottom line is that I have to restore what I can right now and then when this is done, worry about getting a brand new computer somehow, so I can resume working.



No Disney gift card hoarding for me for the foreseeable future, sadly.

 

[funatdisney]

Oh Sherry, that is just terrible. I am sorry that you had to go through all that. Sounds like a nightmare to me.

I am sorry that DH couldn't do more for you. He understands your pain since he had the same thing happen to him years ago. He makes sure that he buys new computers every two years or so for his business (he is a software programmer). He did say that your crash was worse than mine last August. I have been able to cover all of my files, (but a few pictures) and they were not renamed. He mentioned that this is a hardware problem and not a software problem. Thus, the changing out computers every couple of years or so.

 

[Sherry E]

Oh Sherry, that is just terrible. I am sorry that you had to go through all that. Sounds like a nightmare to me.

I am sorry that DH couldn't do more for you. He understands your pain since he had the same thing happen to him years ago. He makes sure that he buys new computers every two years or so for his business (he is a software programmer). He did say that your crash was worse than mine last August. I have been able to cover all of my files, (but a few pictures) and they were not renamed. He mentioned that this is a hardware problem and not a software problem. Thus, the changing out computers every couple of years or so.

Liza - A nightmare it is, indeed.

And I forgot to mention in my above update that a lot of the stuff that the PC saved and renamed is total junk - it's either like copies of webpages I recently visited (like the DIS, for example) or it's small pieces of documents that were corrupted. For example, if I typed a 30-page document for a client and that file was corrupted, the PC may have saved only Page 6 or something, and the rest of it was lost. And yet, there are 50 copies of other documents! (I found 50 copies of one of my saved Trip Report installments!)


And you know how I was just saying that I have a lot of photos saved around in different places (though not all of them), so if I lost some on the PC I could get SOME of them back?

Well, don't even get me started on how Photobucket's site has been down for the last 2 days for a portion of its users (not everyone, but a portion of them).

My paid Photobucket Pro account - the one that has ALL of my December 2010 DLR photos, my November 2010 photos and all my Farmers Market/The Grove photos, as well as all the albums that I recently made when trying to categorize my photos - is now inaccessible. My free account is okay.

On Facebook, on the Photobucket page, all kinds of people are freaking out because they are losing money and business due to their photos not appearing. Some folks have auctions on eBay, some folks have photos on their websites for business, and some just have their photos on Photobucket as a back-up in case their PC crashed.

It seems like a lot of Photobucket customers are afraid that ALL of their data has been lost...and Photobucket is hemming and hawing and not being direct in their information.

Again, this is not ALL of the Photobucket accounts, just some of them. And I am in that group whose account is now inaccessible.


If I lost all of my photos from the PC as well as on Photobucket....I might seriously have a breakdown.

 

[funatdisney]

That's why Photobucket was down yesterday morning. I have the free account and was able to get to my pics later in the day. I was unaware of the problems Photobicket is having. That isn't good news.

Hang in there, Sherry. You have a lot of work ahead of you. Just know that we are behind you and support you.

 

[TheColtonsMom]

Sherry I am so sorry! I know this won't help you now but ever since we had the fire and lost our PC in 2000 we have been backing up everything and keeping it 2 places. For example every pic from our DL trip is on photobucket, on a CD in my file and on a CD at my mothers home... same with Documents and the HD videos we shoot, copies on CD or DVD both here and at my Mother's house every time we work on them. We thought about subscribing to a back-up service but some of our work stuff is sensitive and I would hate for someone's private memories or financial info to be accesible to a company whose employees might do something like posting on-line or fraud with this info.. Thus we continue to back-up ourselves and when we got our new computers it was time consuming to re-add these files from CDs but not nearly as bad as what you are currently going through as at least the CD roms are labled properly!

 

[DizNee Luver]

I'm so sorry Sherry, that really sucks & I feel your pain!

The program we used found them all (also with different names) but it was in the original folders we made. So recovery & figuring out what was in them was pretty easy.

It still might be worth running the free scan just to see if it shows them in their original folders. Might save you a lot of time!