Joined: Feb '12
Location: Canada
Age: 65 (M)
Posts: 6036
In addition to all the very helpfull poker tips and HUGE generosity of BankrollMob.com,....I've also had some VERY helpfull tips and insight on the operation of computers from some of the members here...for which I'm very gratefull...!
...and in particular rfdflyboy, for telling me about the removal tool 'Search Everything' which is the BEST thing you could EVER download into your computer as it removes any unwanted things other programs just can't...
I used it the other day to remove an AVG Search Bar or whatever it's called,...and I HIGHLY recomend all the members here download it to your 'puter...
Question for the resident computer geniuses:
My old computer blue-screened and died a few years back. There are many pics and other stuff on there I would like to retrieve from the hard drive...
Does anybody know how to do this or recomend a website or whatever software is available to perform this task....?
Lord knows the insurmountable embarrassement I would suffer should anybody discover my 'huge penile and testicular selfies'..... <NOT
Any help or suggestions would be GREATLY appreciated...
Edited by demodawggy (30 January 2014 @ 18:26 GMT)
Joined: Mar '09
Location: Greece
Age: 48 (F)
Posts: 14196
Had that once in my laptop. Couldnt do anything about it, till my cousin wired it with his and did his magic. Unfortunately wasnt much to do about saving my files. Everything was erased, but at least the laptop works fine since then except the occasional formats cause it clogs easily Try to connect the hard drive to your working computer, and then follow directions from sites over the net.
Joined: Nov '09
Location: Canada
Age: 56 (M)
Posts: 2387
When my laptop at work blue-screened a couple of years ago, our IT guy simply took out the hard drive,went out to a computer supplies store and bought an adapter which plugs into the hard drive and has a USB output. Once it was plugged into a working computer I was able to view and retrieve my files safely before we did a system restore. Worked great and wasn't very expensive. If you are not in a hurry you can probably buy one off Ebay and have it shipped to you. GL!
Joined: Apr '11
Location: Romania
Age: 36 (M)
Posts: 6669
It really depends mate what caused your blues screen of death on that particular pc. If the part responsable was the hdd then you have slim chances of recovering something from it but not impossible. If the problem was cased by another component you can simply plug up that hdd to another pc and read the data stored on it
Joined: Jun '12
Location: Greece
Age: 44 (M)
Posts: 488
YES.There is one very simple solution but requires access to the BIOS section.The majority of blue screen of death(BSOD) cases does not affect so deep but you never know.
Acquire one live cd of whatever linux distribution you like:for example ubuntu 12.04.(you download it and burn it as exe file,smthing like that.Then from BIOS set your pc to start from cd.You force it to read the live cd.From it you can "load" an entire system without deal with the damaged hard drive. Inside you can perfectly guide to whatever you like and search all kind of files by their ends .JPEG,.MP3 etc. Imagine you can fly above an tornado hit devastated area with a chopper and rescue what you need/like.If there is a virus you can possibly locate it as special file ( if you have skill to do it
Final step INSTALL UBUNTU to get rid of BSOD and rest of crashes once and for all
Joined: Jan '12
Location: United States
Age: 34 (F)
Posts: 2
just hook up the hard drive from your old computer into another computer as a secondary drive as long as they are both windows you will have no issues looking through the files and picking those u want to transfer to your new computer if the hard drive is what has failed you will have a tougher time and would need someone who knows what they are doing...as a side note when u first turn on the computer it might ask you which windows to load if you have the same operating system make sure u open up the original partition of windows and you will be all cool that computer won't be a pain in the ace any longer.
Joined: Jun '12
Location: Greece
Age: 44 (M)
Posts: 488
I think retrieving such files like images,mp3 or videos YES is that simple.Dont know the technical figures of yours old computer but there are dozens of linux distributions which gonna fit perfect.One called MINT i strongly believe that it would be like having new pc with Windows 7 on it( from the perspective of performance as we speak. Long time passed without meeting on the tables thans to all-in freaks,friend.Sent enough snow?
It's would be simple to transfer your data from on hard drive to other, but there could be one problem. Since you 1-st HD installed in your old PC there can be used the old connector type. New PC's connector type is SATA Check it out. You may need an adapter that mahdrof advised to you.
Joined: Apr '09
Location: Australia
Age: 41 (M)
Posts: 6483
As everyone else has suggested you can generally recover everything you want from you HDD simply by connecting it to a working PC. Then you can just drag whatever you like across to a working HDD, no data-recovery required.
However, if the hard drive partition table has corrupted and it's no longer readable, then you are in more trouble and you WILL need proper data recovery tools - however, these tools aren't always "beginner" tools.. if you need to use data recovery software to retrieve your files I would suggest getting somebody good with computers to do if for you, as you can actually bugger up the HDD even worse if you don't know what you're doing.
------------ The most difficult HDD recovery is when the whole drive has completely failed and won't receive power and is completely broken, in which case it can be necessary to transplant the disk platters (in mechanical drives) to a new casing/drive - this is extremely difficult and/or expensive. However - this is definitely not required if you're getting a BSOD error - since this is actually a windows error - which means your HDD is still working.
Most likely with a BSOD error, there's probably nothing wrong with your HDD at all and you should be able to copy over everything you like, shouldn't cost you anything - you can either use a live boot disc as someone suggested, or - the method I prefer - connect you HDD to a working PC (faster copying speeds than to USB/network). The thing is, your computer is able to load Windows from the HDD, but then Windows is unable to load itself - this can be due to bad software or bad hardware. It's quite possible there is literally nothing wrong with the HDD at all.
Edited by jessthehuman (31 January 2014 @ 22:36 GMT)
<NOT
