Microsoft

[318_Magnum]

Just fried my desktop. I would NOT recommend downloading SP3!! Windows Automatic Update d/l and installed SP3 without notifying me, and forced me to restart the PC when I got home one day. Well, now the computer is completely crashed and it won't even boot up...  Not under a restore point, with a boot disc, in safe mode, nothing.

So, take it from me, turn off Automatic Update and avoid SP3 like the plague, because that's all it is.



P.S.
I'd like to extend a personal thank you to Microsoft's outstanding R&D team for arbitrarily destroying THREE YEARS worth of irreplaceable pictures, videos, and music collections, plus 80% of my college papers, financial documents, reference catalogs, and other such data.

[Bill_Reilly]

All you have to do is install the drive into another computer as a second drive and just copy all your stuff over. Or, if you're not tech-savvy, just give it to the geek-squad and they'll copy it over onto an external drive that you can take home.

Not to defend Microsoft of course - they suck ass, but you can definitely save everything on the drive.

[Ciscodog]

 

Yep - he's right.

Now you can buy an IMac!   

[ilabodyguy]

Yep - he's right.

Now you can buy an IMac!   

I just hugged my Mac today

[67 dartgts]

Hello:
  318_magnum I can understand how you feel........It's no fun losing anything in a computer...a good example of why frequent backups to cd's should be part of your computer use.   
   Not being a know it all-----I've been in your shoes myself.

             Good Luck
                Maynard

[flyboy01]

Mine did not have a problem. 

[ValiantOne]

I see it happen EVERY day at work. We hold off on pushing out service packs / updates and such for a few weeks, unless they address serious security risks. You just never know what hardware and software they are going to tangle with.

You should definitely be using a back up of some sort. For a single pc, an external hard drive would be a good match. I have installed many of the One Touch type of drives for friends and family and they seem to work well. Most of my clients use tape drives, removable hard drives or we push the data over to a remote back up at an offsite data center. Try:

http://www.maxtorsolutions.com/en/catalog/OTIII_USB/index.html

Bill is spot on about getting your data back. If you have no luck locally send your drive to me and I'll extract anything that is available and burn it on to a dvd for you and send it back. The important thing is NOT to reinstall your operating system on that drive until you get the data off of it.

Hope that helps!!!

Chris E.

[swingin]

 Seriously, buy a Mac..............

[fourspeed]

I would not run out and buy a Mac myself, but I wouldn't buy a computer with Vista on it either. No matter what you run, you need to back up your data somehow. What happens when you drop your MacBook on the floor, or when your Mac Pro's hard drive craps out? Maybe their software is better, but if you think you're disaster-proof, think again.

[Ciscodog]

I would not run out and buy a Mac myself, but I wouldn't buy a computer with Vista on it either. No matter what you run, you need to back up your data somehow. What happens when you drop your MacBook on the floor, or when your Mac Pro's hard drive craps out? Maybe their software is better, but if you think you're disaster-proof, think again.

We could all get hit by a truck too.

[68_Val_Sedan]

I would not run out and buy a Mac myself, but I wouldn't buy a computer with Vista on it either. No matter what you run, you need to back up your data somehow. What happens when you drop your MacBook on the floor, or when your Mac Pro's hard drive craps out? Maybe their software is better, but if you think you're disaster-proof, think again.

I agree  ... both computers have their share of problems

[That One Guy]

I know some people who love their mac, I love my pc, don't go out and buy a mac cuz people say it's better than windows, go and play with 'em first, if you know someone with a mac, ask to play on it first, then decide what to get.
Everyone talks down on vista, even me, but it's not a bad thing, I have started liking it, even though I can't play my new NHRA game on it, or my older downloaded movies. You can always download something that'll make it so you can use your older stuff on vista.
I hope everything works out good for you, this is coming from someone who just bought a new computer becaues he punched the last one and broke it, and fried the hard drive on the one before that.