CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

garyfritz · Joined: 08 Apr 2006 Posts: 12088 Location: Fort Collins, CO

No, he says he has two Dell 4600's. One has the grinder, one has the viruses. Should clone without a hitch.

Actually Windows has come a long way in the last 10-15 years. I'm not certain but I think it's possible to clone to dissimilar hardware and Windows will fall back to least-common-denominator drivers until you can download the appropriate drivers. Not something I'd recommend for the faint of heart, though.

Life is much more challenging when all possible hardware doesn't come from the OS vendor. Smile

zGman · Joined: 22 May 2006 Posts: 599

I have actually gotten an XP drive to boot in wildly different machines,
however - if you are building something serious, there is something
called a "hardware abstraction layer" (I have no idea) that is created
during the op sys install which is best to start fresh.

G

dturco · Posted: Thu Jan 07, 2010 2:51 am Post subject:

Well I got the external hard drive. And I have downloaded all of my files. It onlY said I had 7.90GB of files to transfer out of 23GB?
Anyway I think I have all of the important stuff.

Question though, how do you get to view the files on the external hard drive? It says retrieve and then wants to send it back to the "C" drive in my Dell.

External hard drive is a western digital 500GB model #WDBAAF50000EBK-NESN

incova · Joined: 27 Nov 2006 Posts: 789 Location: london

When will you find out if you do have all the important stuff? after its all gone? double check it all, then do it again, where did you save all your files on the original HDD just in my documents or other sections make sure you have everything.

Go to windows explorer right click the c partition and write down the used amount. Go to your folders and right click all the folders you save stuff in, now do the same for any other partitions.

If you want to view the files on the external you should be able to simply open them in windows explorer. Your old HDD sounds like its ready to die, everytime you boot and use it you are killing it, so make sure you have everything.

When it does die and you put the usb HDD on another pc run PREVX you can get a trial version and get back to us on what its found.

http://www.prevx.com/

For the money it does what its meant to I am sure others will chime in with their own security software, use whats best for you.

digitalayon · Joined: 02 Mar 2009 Posts: 921

Well I finally get to help in something here that is related to my profession....the hard drive or fan is going bad....get a backup online setup with Carbonite or Mozy....now then take your PC into a reputable shop....Do not pay more to have it fixed than the machine is worth unless you are really needing to use the PC do to low funds.....then if the drive fails....you could do the freezer trick......but that's only if it dies....FYI....dell 400?!?!?!? It was three years ago that I was throwing those to the scrap heap. Time to upgrade!!!!!

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Thu Jan 07, 2010 5:31 am Post subject:

I forgot about the freezer trick!

I had to do that on my 18GB 10 000RPM SCSI drive. I put it outside on the window ledge at -18C and got all the info off it.

digitalayon · Joined: 02 Mar 2009 Posts: 921

if you know what you are doing, the freezer trick can give you that one last shot!!!!!.....Just watch for zapping condensation...saw a nasty zapp a few years back!!!

dturco · Posted: Sat Jan 09, 2010 4:12 am Post subject:

Well the Dell [The Grinder one] is now stuck in safe mode hell. The other Dell will not relinquish it's hold either . I ran chkdsk it says all is fine. I ran c/ bebug and it finds 4 different things. No I don't know what, just alot of long lines of code and then back to the main screen saying, you have a virus, run scan. Which I can't because the virus scans want to access the internet first, which I cant do because of the damn virus. Evil or Very Mad

See Kal, it's not just you. But this virus I have in my spare Dell is 2 Years old and I still cant get around it.

f*cking damn jerk-off hacker virus dicks. Evil or Very Mad

On another note, the external HDD did save what appears to be everything, BUT , it's save as a mash-upped mess. I cant tell what files are whose until I open them, and well, the wife's bible stuff is now mixed with my PORN. Shocked

I'm going to hell for sure now. Shocked

digitalayon · Joined: 02 Mar 2009 Posts: 921

you have something called a rootkit virus.....I deal with them about every other day with my clients....download this....

http://download.bleepingcomputer.com/sUBs/ComboFix.exe

it is a great program for this anti virus virus. The virus will not let you run it while it is running. So you have to either run it in safe mode, reboot and start it first thing you see before the virus loads, or try a different account on the PC. But it should help immensly. Do not do the restore option when it asks to download it. It is useless so just say no. Once you get rid of the virus, I would take the grinding hard drive out of that PC. Wrap it tight in a anti-static bag and tape it shut....put it in the freezer for an hour or so and then put that drive into the PC that had the virus and proceed to start it up and you may have to go into the manager utility to assign the disk and make it active if it does not show in "my computer"....you get there by right clicking on my computer and choosing "manage"....then you go to disk management. But if it is in "My computer", go into the disk and immediatly start copying your data files. I'm guessing most of them are your documents and settings in that drive. You may only have a small amount of time. But get as much as you can over to the to the other hard drive the system is booted from. LOL...this is like a repetitive daily chore for me.