This topic was created after it was split from the BarryVan compo (http://forum.openmpt.org/index.php?topic=2260.0)
I'm afraid I have to pass this round. Can't work with sounds now.
My computer broke down in a dramatic way, also electrically.
It's still the question if I can rescue what's left on the HD.
So I'm left with an old laptop having net-connection and that's it.
I hope you can fix it, Sam_Zen. It's hard when you lose what you have collected for years :(
Let's hope you can rescue your data.
as seen on Purple Motion's forum:
"Tough guys don't take backups.. But they cry a lot." ;)
That's terrible news, Sam_Zen! :'( I hope you can get it all sorted out. :? If your hard-drive's crashed, you can maybe try Restorer2000 (http://www.restorer2000.com/) - I've had really good results with it.
PC Inspector File Recovery (http://www.pcinspector.de) is also a pretty nice tool for rescuing data. Beware that most data rescuing tools can only fix software errors, though. Hardware failurs are hard to fix.
Thanks for the compassion, guys.
Jojo is right about backups, but I didn't have a dvd-burner to make a proper image of the HD.
As an alternative I was used to burn, once in a while, data, work, and program version on a Cdrom.
So not everything is lost, Nakranoth, I have this archive. The latest number is 67 (hex).
And during the time that the system went slowly down the drain, but still had access in safe mode,
I managed to copy parts of the data on two memory sticks.
I know PC inspector, but I'm afraid that it's too late for a software recovery.
In the end the HD came in an uncontrollable loop of reboot, and then the power broke down.
So I have to assemble a new sound-kit for the studio anyway.
I learned from this, that having net-connection and local soundwork on one system is quite risky.
If it breaks down, there's nothing else to do, except blowing on a bamboo flute.
I'm planning to buy a portable HD with USB, and ask the retailer to try to copy the data of the damaged HD on it.
Then I also will have a medium to make image-backups in the future, lots of space.
If you're required to buy a pc, then you probably cannot get away under the fact that it will have SATA. If so, buy 2 identical SATA harddiscs, and put them in MIRROR mode. You will get 1 partition of the size of 1 of the Harddiscs in total, but every data it writes will be stored on both Harddiscs, which means that the data is always backed up.
And secondly, you cannot install windows on an external harddisk.
QuoteAnd secondly, you cannot install windows on an external harddisk.
Not neccesarily. Some PCs support booting from USB devices.
Quote from: "Jojo"QuoteAnd secondly, you cannot install windows on an external harddisk.
Not neccesarily. Some PCs support booting from USB devices.
As does my system, but thus far, I haven't been able with many different USB devices among USB sticks and USB Harddrives, to get a working windows installation on it. The install does start, and it copies the files to the USB drive, but as soon as it goes into the first boot sequence, it fails. It just seems impossible. And I've spoken with many people about it too. It just seems to be impossible.
blame windows then. it works with other OSes :P
by the way: thread hijacking ftw :P
Afaik it's very difficult, because the medium is another drive, so there will trouble with some system paths.
I am not going to use the portable HD as a bootable one. It will be just for archiving data.
Buying a new pc is not a priority now. I still have enough hardware on the shelve to try to assemble one first.
Enough about this, it's off-topic indeed.
Sam_Zen, what did you do to me?!?!?! Just 20 Minutes ago, the HDD of my laptop broke down too!!! :x
Quote from: "Jojo"Sam_Zen, what did you do to me?!?!?! Just 20 Minutes ago, the HDD of my laptop broke down too!!! :x
It must be somekind of virus. Last thursday mine crashed too.
this is really new. all my hardware normally breaks down in autumn! :P
but in this case, it really sucks since there was some really important sourcecode on it... i don't care about all the other thouands of files, but this particular file is lost... damnit...
I'm still pretty sure that most data can be recovered from the crashed HD, because it was divided into 3 partitions.
I'll take it to the local PC store having a clever technician. It's 20 GB, so it could be copied to one or more USB sticks.
So I'll have to build up a new system.
Virus or not, I don't mind. Virusscanners are always running behind the facts.
So if protection is concerned, if setting up a new web-system, the first priority is a proper firewall.
I found a nice free one, working from W98 and on, SoftPerfect Personal Firewall at NoNags.
I'm so glad i'm not hooked into the internet at home.
[blows fat cigar puffs...condescendingly laughing]
well, hardware failures certainly don't result from viruses. :)
ah sam I'm so sorry.
mine's broken too it seems. the light's are on, but no-one's at home...
At the shop they assured me that the data could be rescued from the hardisk.
To copy this 20 GB to memory sticks appeared to be quite inefficient and expensive.
So I then found a portable harddisk as better medium. 500 Giga for 69 euro, it's amazing.
This is huge, so I will ask the technician, if it's possible to create several partitions on such a thing as well.
I'm used to this kind of survey, having a division between program, work and archive areas.
If this rescue succeeds, I'm quite happy, because I was in the middle of reducing noise from a recording.
From a cassette, with an LP as source, so I already spend quite some hours for it.
Apart from other vital data, like my addressbook for example.
Sam_Zen, to answer your question, sure. You can partition an external harddrive as easilly as you can partition your normal internal harddrive.
Its even possible to partition an usb stick! :nuts: Downside of that is that windows will only recognise the first partition, but this limitation is solely applicable to usb sticks. External harddrives can be partitioned as desired without any problems. I have a 1 TB external Hard drive partitioned and its no problem. Did the same to my usb stick for testing purpose, and although it was a bit hard to partition my usbstick, it worked, and the first partition showed up in the explorer as expected. The second didn't though, but that was just a test anyway.
Yep, today I brought the gear to the shop, and the technician will make 5 partitions and copy the HD on it.
Since I have to get a new studio-pc, this is a good opportunity to re-consider the studio-routing.
Because it appeared to be a mistake to have the pc as the center of the studio.
All instrument sources are coupled to my main mixer, which was connected to the sound input(s) of the pc.
Then the outputs of the pc were connected to the main amplifiers of the studio monitors.
The fact that I can't make any sound in the studio now, because the pc is removed, shows the wrong approach.
So I'll have to reset my studio wiring, to be able to mix and make sound first, even without a pc.
Second opportunity when getting a new pc, is to enhance the sound properties.
So far the recent years, I did all the work on a relatively slow set (620 Mhz) with little RAM.
I don't go hunting for some dual-core state of the art machine, but some improvement can be made.
With the external HD I now already have lotsa space, but the new set also must have more RAM on board.
For example in my multitrack mixer I had a max of 7 stereo-tracks, then the record button was disabled.
Third opportunity is my use of multi-channel I/O audio. So far, as a workaround, I used 2 stereo soundcards for it.
In the meantime prices have gone down, so I'm going to look for an 8 in - 8 out external device.
There is many recovery companies around the world. My best bet will be IBAS (a Norwegian company) and they have a 24/7 hours FREE phone service!
I have never used them myself and they are very expensive but to my best knowledge they the best there is (or was - it's been a few years hehe).
www.ibas.no (norwegian site)
www.ibas.com
Might be worth checking out if you REALLY want your data :)
If you have a look at the costs of data resucing, a free phone service doesn't count that much anymore... :P
There are good technicians all over the world. There are also good technicians here in NL.
The better ones which are more expensive do have the ability to open the harddisc in a suitable environment to restore any mechanical failures in order to get the last data of it.
I also know a few tricks that don't require opening the case, and usually give a 30 minute access window to copy files from the disc.
Its a technique discovered and utilised by russians. You basically deep freeze the harddrive for atleast a few hours. Ofcource pack it well so it doesn't get wet. Due to the fact that its metal, the parts will schrink a little allowing it to work again. But due to warmth generated by the device itself, the metal will expand again, and most likelly will crash again.
My best advice in such cases is to freeze the drive, then attach it to the pc so you have an access window of say... 30 minutes. You open command, execute a dir /b/s >allfiiles.txt and copy the textfile to a location you can work with it thats not on that harddrive. (or include its path: c:\allfiles.txt)
Then disconnect the harddrive again, and put it back in the freezer.
Now use the allfiles.txt to determine the files you want to copy, and edit the allfiles.txt so it contains copy filename newlocation. That way when renaming to .bat or .cmd, you can just execute the script and get everything copied as efficient as possible. :)
So far I don't assume that in this case it's a matter of a badly damaged hard disk (IDE).
I opened the case and removed the HD to bring it to the technician of the shop.
I have a collection of HD's with different OS's on it, but when connecting them to the case, the same behaviour occurred :
an endless loop of rebooting. So it's really the hardware or motherboard which has broken down in the first place.
And I don't need to get the exact content of the HD back, I have enough things on it externally archived, I'm just interested in some data I like being recovered for convenience.
The company I mentioned actually remove each single platter and scans them in a special scanner, cool toys but very expensive indeed.
When it comes to figuring out hardware problems I would first of all run memtest86+ and then I would try to get some live cd with linux or something. I had big problems with one of my machines (old amd crap) that was crashing randomly. Windows did not report any problems at all but linux on the other hand pumped out a lot of errors (I think it was some interrupt timing mismatch). However I underclocked this machine and now it have been working (more or less hehe) like it should for a few years.
Regarding LPChip's method of "fixing" hard drives. Is this just for hard-drives who have problems with the electronics? (same effect as freeze spray) or is the freezing process supposed to do something with mechanical defects?! (e.g. reduce free play or stuff like that) ?!
I believe it can work for mechanical problems too.
Hello fellows, it seems the season, since my P.C just decided to die as well. I'll be offline for a bit too until things are worked out.
Well, it seems the season indeed...
Quote from: "Waxhead"I would first of all run memtest86+ and then I would try to get some live cd with linux or something.
In the past I was able to test, repair or rescue a lot with "Hiren's bootable disk".
It's a big package with all kinds of tools, system analyzing like Aria, disk tests, partition managers, etc.
I will be backing up to me site, along with my external.
I'm a lucky person today.
The IDE disk of the broken machine has successfully been transferred to the external HD.
I asked for 5 partitions on the disk, but the technician, who did the job, told me, that windoze just allows 4.
Well, I can live with that.
And a friend of a friend of mine did have a set on the shelve for me.
An XP set, so I can arrange it to do the internet, instead of the old laptop with W98 using now..
Uh, thats not right.
Indeed, you can have only up to 4 primary partitions, but You can create one external partition and devide it into 26 logical stations which could be seen as partitions on their own. Why 26? There are no more drive letters :P Unless you have windows XP and create a folder mapping instead of a drive mapping.
hmm..reminds me of this one! :P
(http://sagagames.de/ithumb/thumbs/57_daslaufwerkdaskeinlaufwerkistqb89.jpg) (http://sagagames.de/ithumb/show/57_daslaufwerkdaskeinlaufwerkistqb89.png)
My brother, who runs an IT business, had a system for me too on the shelve.
So I can build up that set to perform the sound studio actions. So I'm even more lucky.
So far I worked with W2K, and now both machines run on XP, so I will have to get used to it.
And download the XP version of TweakUI..
I don't need that much partitions, because I don't see them as maps, but as functional areas.
On the W2K I had three for the survey, roughly divided into : basic programs - work - archive.
Roughly, because I used to place open-source apps or other progs without a setup procedure on the 'work' partition.
Just to keep them out of the standard Program Files map.
Stepping up to XP also means that I no longer can decrease the colors of my dialog screenshots to 16, because of the gradients.
If you work a bit with XP, you'll see that you can tweak it fairly much to be Win2K like.
On the properties of the desktop, tab appearance, you can select the classic windows skin. This will allow you to get your graphics back to how win2k looks.
If you want even more performance boosts like Win2K, then I would suggest to create a slipstreamed version of windows XP, put SP2 on it and strip everything off like you would with TweakIU. Even all the tweaks itself can be executed.
The difference? A slipstreamed version has to be installed, but due to this, it will not install unwanted things. There's an easy tool for this called nLite (http://nliteos.com)
Don't get me wrong. I don't want to go back to W2K like, out of some nostalgia. :)
And XP is much more stable. It took me months tuning the W2K system to get some stabilty.
The tweaking I apply is more like some M$ automatisms I want to disable.
Like autorun if I put a CD in the drive. Or some nonsense on the taskbar.
(Just tested the new set, and it's great. Clockspeed is tripled, RAM doubled..
If working with sound, such improvements are very important.)
from what i know, Win2K is much more stable than WinXP. I also have the classic Win2K look enabled in WinXP. Not because of nostalgia, but because it's much easier on my eyes, easier to use, etc...
Hmm, if that's so, I will check it out.
I compensated for that terrible windows look by applying the uxtheme patch.
It allows you to download and use third party Visual Styles.
There are so many visual styles available on the internet. I always get mine from deviantArt, and it looks even much better than the windows classic skin. :)
You can do most tweaks from whitin nLite. For instance, I have disabled that advance search option out of windows. When I now press search in explorer, I get the files and folders search immediatelly, with the option to choose another search method. Also stuff in the taskbar etc can be tweaked, and a whole lot more.
Like running command prompt as right click menu from my computer, showing control panel in there, making sure that the driveletters are shown first, then the name on the drive instead of the other way around, stuff like that...
You should try out nLite just to see what it can do. :)
Oh, and if you indeed go through with it, I recommend to install Virtual PC first so you can test your nLite CD. If you made an error and the cd doesn't boot, then you haven't lost a cd :) (use the ISO option for this)
Myself, I've themed my XP so that it looks like GNOME (from Linux); I even applied the Tango patcher to fix all of the standard icons so that they use the Tango icon theme. :D It's really satisfying when I confuse people who use my computer. :)
I personally haven't had too many stability issues with XP. The most difficulty I've had has been getting my X-Fi to run without issues consistently - it went through a patch of pretending not to exist every couple of months. ::)
I never have had such problems with my x-fi :o
Creative's drivers suck anyway :P
There is a little talk about themes here and even if I prefer the classic win look I would like to spice it up a tad. If anyone know of a xp style who is 99% simmilar to the classic look please give me a hint ;)
Here you go, Waxhead. :) This is how to make it look like the GNOME Clearlooks theme, which is nice and easy on the eyes, whilst still fairly "traditional" in style. It's kinda like a slightly blinged-up version of the standard. :D
http://nithinkamath.info/archives/2006/12/make-windows-xp-desktop-look-like-gnome/
Quote from: "bvanoudtshoorn"Here you go, Waxhead. :) This is how to make it look like the GNOME Clearlooks theme, which is nice and easy on the eyes, whilst still fairly "traditional" in style. It's kinda like a slightly blinged-up version of the standard. :D
http://nithinkamath.info/archives/2006/12/make-windows-xp-desktop-look-like-gnome/
Thanks but even this is a little to beefed up for my taste :)
if I want gnome I just run it on some of my other machines :D
PS! and also I don't want to get confused when running xming
QuotePS! and also I don't want to get confused when running xming
But that's half the fun! :D When I get a chance (and if I remember), I'll post a screenshot of my XP desktop. It's very GNOMEy. If you're still after themes in a week or so, I'll be able to set you up with some of the ultra-minimalist themes I have installed - some of them are even simpler than the old-style Windows look!
Quote from: "bvanoudtshoorn"QuotePS! and also I don't want to get confused when running xming
But that's half the fun! :D When I get a chance (and if I remember), I'll post a screenshot of my XP desktop. It's very GNOMEy. If you're still after themes in a week or so, I'll be able to set you up with some of the ultra-minimalist themes I have installed - some of them are even simpler than the old-style Windows look!
That's great :) - (guess we are close to a topic split here)
I guess so too.
I'm not much interested in themes, I just want things to be functional with maximum survey and navigation.
The only icon I have on my XP desktop is Total Commander anyway.
There starts my working base.
So I don't need to tweak that much. Quick access to drives, directory hotlist, command-line, etc.
I used to have Control Panel (still called 'control.exe' ?) as one of the buttons in my custom toolbar.
I have to build my toolbox again from scratch on the XP, so TC is the first app to add to the system.
Because now comes a period with a lot of data- or setup-files copying from CD's or mem-sticks.
Last night I installed TC and it looked awful, but it was very late, so I quit.
Just run the set again, and it appeared that I had forgotten to check the screen resolution. Still 800x600..
Quote from: "Waxhead"There is a little talk about themes here and even if I prefer the classic win look I would like to spice it up a tad. If anyone know of a xp style who is 99% simmilar to the classic look please give me a hint ;)
There are many styles I guess. Just find one in the minimalistic genre that suits your needs.
I've listed a few here: (click on the screenshot to get a bigger version)
http://sisiphus00.deviantart.com/art/ClassicT-50738418
http://heylove.deviantart.com/art/SHADED-10331722
http://kowoolo.deviantart.com/art/GAIA-INTER-VS-64093776
http://hsn.deviantart.com/art/Clearlooks-0-6-30410533
http://lassekongo83.deviantart.com/art/Glassic-Candy-47170768
And perhaps other options (skins that are grey and not bad looking)
http://madbwana.deviantart.com/art/SoftLight-VS-30721227
Well I've browsed a few pages. If you're interested in getting more, go here: http://browse.deviantart.com/customization/skins/windows/visualstyle
@Sam_Zen
LOL I understand you :) TC is my "OS" too. There are a few essential tools like TC, Ultramon (smart taskbar), Pidgin, and off course my own magnificent DriveGLEAM (download *really-free* from: http://drivegleam.dirtcellar.net) who offers be the most basic tools I need.
I try my best to stay away from Microsoft's bloated software and I hope you (and everyone else for that matter) do that too! and I really recommend people to give linux a few tries. For those who can't live without TC and are considering Linux have a look at Krusader (TC clone for *nix systems)
@LPChip
Hey thanks but even these themes are to juicy or me :) Only theme I kind of liked was this http://lassekongo83.deviantart.com/art/Glassic-Candy-47170768 and to be honest I only liked the buttons :)
So I guess what I'm looking for is the standard windows look with spiced up buttons :P
Anyway folks - we are terrible off topic here ;)
Well, I gave it a second thought, and maybe this is not that off topic as it seems.
Of course it starts about a broken PC, the options for repair and recovery.
But then the next stage is of course about building up a new set again. Which can include themes too.
2 Waxhead
Yep, same policy here. Unless I'm forced to by the OS, I avoid M$ products like Exploder, Inlook Express, etc.
I even ignore the C:/ layout M$ has created for the average consumer, like the silly 'My Documents', 'My Music'..
My collection of free or opensource apps can be found at my links page (http://www.louigiverona.com/webarchive/samzen/links.html)
A nice addition to that link: http://portablefreeware.com
It contains so many applications that are portable meaning no install or install once, and it doesn't take resources because they're not loaded when windows start unless you make it to do so.
While we're at it... http://portableapps.com/ - Nice utlity for e.g. USB sticks! :)
Quote from: "Jojo"While we're at it... http://portableapps.com/ - Nice utlity for e.g. USB sticks! :)
All apps on that site are also on portable freeware :)
can't see there a nice launcher app tho ;P