The Digital Surgery (computer questions/problems here)

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Matlot
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Re: The Digital Surgery

Post by Matlot »

Cheers BB.

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hhinner
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Re: The Digital Surgery

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J.J.B.
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Re: The Digital Surgery

Post by J.J.B. »

If it is the Windows (OS) password it may be fairly straight-forward but the easiest thing could be to reinstall Windows altogether. You may lose some features and installed programs but provided you don't format the hard drive you should safeguard all your personal data such as documents, photos etc. Since you haven't used it in 3 years this may not bother you that much.

If it is the BIOS password, however, one that is required before the OS will even load, it's a different proposition altogether. Sometimes these can be reset by removing the CMOS battery from the motherboard and leaving it overnight to completely lose power, other times you need to find the security chip and short out a couple of pins, which is horrific.

If you can spare a few hundred Baht, I'd certainly follow BB's suggestion as a first step rather than trying anything myself.
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Re: The Digital Surgery

Post by Thistle »

Sure all the input the current OP receiving is good,but have to agree a quick visit to Mr Don will resolve the problem,quickly and at a very small outlay financially.Would highly recommend him for any computer problems,big or small.
Matlot
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Re: The Digital Surgery

Post by Matlot »

I went to see Mr Don! Less than 5 min and all sorted, including an additional problem I had with the laptop. Good service at a very good price.

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StevePIraq
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What's happenned to my photos

Post by StevePIraq »

I have just been reminiscing and looking at some old photos and found quite a few have gone duff.

Can anyone shed any light on what has happened and how I can possibly recover them. I do have back ups but they are the same as I just overwrite each time I back up.
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buksida
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Re: The Digital Surgery

Post by buksida »

Looks like Jpeg file corruption while being copied or emailed, can happen with crappy SD cards or USB sticks. You may need to revert back to your backups.
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404cameljockey
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Re: The Digital Surgery

Post by 404cameljockey »

You say you've overwritten all of your backups I'm afraid you're probably pretty much screwed.

If the pics are of sentimental value, I'd first try opening them with a few different image viewers, but I don't think it will help.

If they did come from a flash drive or other external media, maybe the deleted originals can be recovered with a recovery program, provided they haven't been overwritten. There's a chance, but I think you said these are old files.

There are free programs you can try to repair corrupted image files but I never had success with any. Sorry. I know some are better than others.

Can you see a full thumbnail of the image in Explorer or other program? That will be a hopeful sign.

You could try opening a file and then saving it in some other formats (gif, etc) then opening that one.

If you want to play with the files technically, make copies in a separate folder and try jpegsnoop on them. It might at least give you complete thumbnails which you could screenshot (in really poor resolution :( )

https://sourceforge.net/projects/jpegsnoop/

+++

It's a pisser when you make the effort to back up your computer and still get screwed!
For the future make sure after the initial full backup only to backup changed files (differential backup). Then when deleting backups to free up disk space, keep the first (full) backup and a few random differential backups from different dates.
Even better, also keep an entire disk image on an external drive which you don't touch from year to year, or at least copies of your music/picture/documents/saved game folders, web favourites, email folders, etc. I recently found a copy of my pictures folder from 2004. :D
musungu
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Computer slow in shutting down

Post by musungu »

Is there somewhere that I can look that will speed the shutting down of my computer. eg like going to Run and typing MSCONFIG and going to Start when the computer is slow to start?
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Re: The Digital Surgery

Post by loua_oz »

No.
Upon shut down, the computer is de-staging whatever files were in use, from the memory to the hard disk. And yours can not do that, at least not within few seconds.
Your hard disk might be at knees, back up what data you have and go to a service shop. Nothing more you can do.
It will never improve. Hardware failure. Like a broken toilet that takes the gunk down to the sewage slowly.

Edit:
My response was hasty, assuming you have
a legit copy of Windows
a Virus protection (Mcafee or Norton or something)

If the above 2 items are true, then my post is valid.
loua_oz
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Re: The Digital Surgery

Post by loua_oz »

buksida wrote: Mon Sep 04, 2017 5:00 pm Looks like Jpeg file corruption while being copied or emailed, can happen with crappy SD cards or USB sticks. You may need to revert back to your backups.
All consumer SSDs are crappy.

Actually, the whole technology is crappy. To sell 200GB SSD, high end vendors sell (customers do not know that) 1 Terabyte. Within months, the most of the cells will fail but not more than 80%.

What happens with 20US$ SSDs? That is what has happened here, unrecoverable.
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Re: The Digital Surgery

Post by Homer »

404cameljockey wrote: Mon Sep 04, 2017 11:02 pmIt's a pisser when you make the effort to back up your computer and still get screwed!
For the future make sure after the initial full backup only to backup changed files (differential backup). Then when deleting backups to free up disk space, keep the first (full) backup and a few random differential backups from different dates.
Amen to being screwed because you thought you had a backup. I've seen it happen at work. Somebody got fired.

Overwriting good with bad is a problem with several solutions. FWIW, here is what I do.
My data files on disk are kept under one of two folders: Data and Storage. Storage is for files I can't imagine modifying. A place to add files to and delete from, but NEVER overwrite existing files. My backup program warns about all the potential overwrites before executing the backup. Data folder is for the rest of my data. I expect to overwrite during its backup. Still, I set the backup to warn me so I can double check. That's easy if backups are frequent, like every 2 or 3 days, but mystifyingly useless if backups are infrequent.

404cameljockey wrote: Mon Sep 04, 2017 11:02 pmEven better, also keep an entire disk image on an external drive which you don't touch from year to year, or at least copies of your music/picture/documents/saved game folders, web favourites, email folders, etc. I recently found a copy of my pictures folder from 2004. :D
That hard drive won't last for ever. I don't trust a single copy of anything to a drive older than 3 years. I buy a new second drive for my PC, make the old one the 'untouchable' - and keep the prior untouchable just in case.

Load anything unreplaceable to a cloud service. No matter how slow your upload speed is, or few gigs you can move a month, it can be done. Slowly. During the off season, I supplement home internet with wifi at coffee places and restaurants.
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Re: The Digital Surgery

Post by TunnelRats »

hhinner wrote: Sun Sep 03, 2017 12:50 pm Or maybe try to do it yourself: https://www.lifewire.com/free-windows-p ... ls-2626179
Or maybe kick out this f***ng MS junk and rely on Linux
(what distribution ever)
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404cameljockey
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Re: The Digital Surgery

Post by 404cameljockey »

Homer wrote: Mon Oct 02, 2017 9:29 pm That hard drive won't last for ever. I don't trust a single copy of anything to a drive older than 3 years. I buy a new second drive for my PC, make the old one the 'untouchable' - and keep the prior untouchable just in case.
My backups have backups. There are a couple more internal 3.5's around somewhere, probably with the caddy if I ever find it again. :)
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loua_oz
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Re: The Digital Surgery

Post by loua_oz »

The only purpose of a backup is - to restore.

Seems trivial and stating the obvious. Not for the guy I know.

Since 2002. he had 2 external drives, one "frozen in time" every month and one for daily incremental backups. Windows XP. In 2010, people started moving to Win 7 but he remained. He did not listen when MS announced end of support for XP. He remained for another 2 years while nobody else had XP any more, until his PC physically crapped out. 2016.

His new Win 7 could not read the data from the drives! The company that made the drives went out of business in 2004, he did not know that, a small company nobody cared about. Nobody bothered to develop device drivers for their old gear for Win 7.

Now, he could go to a shop, get them to hook up the drives to XP and cut CDs. He had 300GB worth of data, each CD 700MB, that would be 330 CDs. Even DVDs would take 70+ pieces.
No way it could be done quickly, even keeping them in order would be a problem.
He would have to leave the drives with the shop and come in several days. But no. He did not do anything. Said he will source XP somewhere and do it himself.
He would not tell why was that but I suspect he had something on the drives embarrassing, compromising or even worse. And the shops don't just stumble on naked pictures - the first they do, they go after them.
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