AAUGH!!! 😫

Mr Tex has recently suffered the same problem. Luckily most of the files useful here were backed up but it is still a very traumatic thing to happen. You have his sympathy.

Well, I believe the HDD is actually good. So even if I can't get it up and running, I should still be able to recover my files. As for the software... I have copies, but few modern devices will even run it anymore. Oh well, time I upgraded anyway, I guess.

You old PC will seem like a bicycle next to the new farahri when you upgrade. Unfortunately with a new computer you'll end up with windows 11, its shite. Go on youtube and turn off all they suggest to get the speed and reliability up.

Get the stuff you need off the old HDD, but don't use it on your new system, it will be way too slow to keep up, and just slow everything down.

I'll probably just get a used desktop off eBay. No doubt throw one of the Linux distros on it. I have MX on a laptop. Bloody greased lightening compared to Windows!

Poor you! It must have ruined your day. I've had that experience too.🤒

I use mint on new computer, I have it set up like a mac, but it can look almost exactly like windows instead if you wanted to!

They all can really. Depends largely on what desktop environment is used. The MX setup I have on my laptop even has Windows 7 icons. That's what I like most about Linux. You're free to customize it anyway you want.

I know how it feels.
My old Mac got some kind of malicious bug that freezes it up when I try to do anything on it.
This happened before I had a chance to transfer all my old photos and research files off it for the new computer. Now unless I spend a bunch of money getting the techies too clean the virus out of it, I have lost a good lot of my favorite doll photos.

Might be a way to get at the files without booting into the corrupted os. If you can make a live Linux usb (lots of YT vids on how to do that) you can boot into that rather than the installed system, then navigate over to your files and copy them onto something else.

My problem is, my PC can't get past the initial start up to engage the display. Only way to get at my files is to yank the drive and put it into an adapter. I have one, but it uses a firewire interface. Only my old PC has one. Soooo.... gotta get one with a USB interface to use with my newer devices. 🙄

Okay... got a good look at everything today and found the culprit. Right there in the middle of the motherboard near the ram card slots is one very bulged capacitor. Given it's location, I suspect that's preventing the boot process from even starting.

Interesting. I have a usb stick designed for booting up in linux, but I was told it won't be able to read my existing files.

As I understand it, Linux can't read windows or mac specific files and vice versa, but it can read common file types, jpeg, gif, png, mp4 and so forth. It's easier with some Linux distros than others, but I believe they can all access the main drive.

Crap and Double CRAP! I yanked the old drive out today to see if I could recover any of my files. I put the drive into an external enclosure and plugged it into my laptop. At first only the recovery partition showed up, but after fiddling with it a bit, the main partition appeared with all the old system folders. Great! So I navigate over to where my files are and bam! Damn laptop picks that exact moment to crash. Nothing I could do, but shut everything down and start over.

Only this time when I plugged in the drive, Windows tells me the drive needs to be formatted. I just figured the file system got corrupted when the lap crashed. Ok, so I right click properties and navigate over to tools to repair bad sectors. No dice. Says, Windows can't access the drive.

Alright, so I open the command terminal and try to fix it with the CHKDSK utility. Comes back this utility can't be used on RAW files. What the hell? So I open disk management and sure enough, says the drive is RAW and empty. No way! Including the OS, games and programs, that drive had over 200 gigs of files on it.

So I try a couple different recovery programs and they all error out trying to access the drive. Guess the drive and my files are history, unless someone here has any ideas...? When I took out the drive I did notice several more bad capacitors. Some of which were actually leaking! So I suppose the drive may be bad as well..... Sigh... 😮‍💨

Sounds like the drive has failed and is probably to root of all your problems. Chances are Even though you thought it was working at first, it was never going to work again.

At least that's my thought. Its also why I always have my important files backed-up so its always on two different hard drives ;)

You may be right.... Fingers crossed though. I just found a text prompt program called TestDisk. Slow and way old school, but it's actually scanning the drive right now. That's further than any other program as gotten all day.

I generally do backup my files, but I got lax about. I thought it had only been a couple of months, but to my dismay, my last backup was almost 2 years ago! Damn, I am getting old....

Aren't we all!

17 hours! That sucker took 17 hours to complete the scan. It finally finishes and comes back with... No partitions found! 🤬

I don't know what's going on. Testdisk says no partitions found. Yet, when you plug in that drive, the system picks it up as Drive E: and Drive F: That's how it was originally setup. E: is a recovery partition. F: contains the OS and files. Now it says both are RAW, but it still picks up the division. Doesn't that mean there's still 2 partitions? I'm stumped.... 😵‍💫

That's a pain :(

There's a collection of tools you may find useful in this toolkit
https://medicatusb.com/
I would use the EaseUS tools to have a look at the drive

Man, I'm really starting to hate computers. I haven't replaced my old system yet, still weighing my options. Meanwhile, I've been trying to get by with my chromebooks and laptops. One of which has a Linux os. So I've been experimenting with it to see if I could get it to run my circa 1999 photo editing software. Yeah I know, but it's simple, easy to use and I like it.

Anyway, Linux has an app called Wine that allows you to run Windows based programs. The way it works, it sort of translates windows script into Linux script on the fly. In practice though, it works more like Google Translate. Sometimes it get's it right, sometimes not even close. Such was the case trying to run my editing software. Just too hit and miss to use.

So, I uninstalled everything, including Wine itself. Problem I ran into, the program file was still listed in the start menu. I wanted it completely gone so I opened the terminal to get rid of it. Well, code is a funny thing. One misplaced semicolon or a dash where a comma should have been can change a command completely and Linux does whatever you tell it. Long story short, I got rid of the errant file bits alright. Along with all my other files and system settings! No major files were on it, just a major pain to reset everything.

Now like windows, Linux has provisions to roll back to an earlier date. Works great, had I ever bothered to set it up. Apparently it's not automatic. sigh...... 🙄

Just use a linx video editor, they are generally free to use.

I haven't tried any of the available Linux vid editors yet. Can't say as I care for any of the photo editors I've tried though. Rather steep learning curve for most of them with a lot of features I'll never use. The one I use is so simple and straight forward. I did find an exact copy of windows paint from the XP error that works on Linux. The one with clear, easy to understand menus. I like that for rough edits and adding watermarks. Again, simple to use. I just need the other program to polish things up, but it's too old school to work with modern Linux or Windows 11.

Meanwhile, the hunt is on for a new, reasonably priced PC to replace my poor old dead workhorse.

I used to use Paint.Net and lack of it on Linux was one of the things that kept me on Windows. Now, though, there is a passable clone of Paint.Net on Linux; it's called Pinta. Apparently it's available on Windows, Mac and even BSD now.