G
Guest
Please can anyone help!
This is slightly long-winded but I will try to explain! I am using a Dell
Inspiron 8100 with Windows XP Home Edition bought in 2001 PIII 1.20
GHz/800MHz, Level 2 cache 512 KB, Mem 128 MB
I have been having problems for a while i.e. system running ridiculously
slow, some program crashes etc. I'd put this down to having a build up of
rubbish, fragmented files, bits of letover programs etc (haven't been
partcularly meticulous with maintenance or backup) also I had an extensive
music library and pictures all of this I attributed to laptop's zero
performance.
So I decided I would obtain all in importance info and do a complete restore
to start a fresh, this is where my problems have gone from worse to worse;
1. tried to back up to cd, only to find drive not writeable, so proceeded to
purchase a USB flash drive
2. in the meantime whilst trying to solve the problem with cd rw drive i
deleted my 'My Music' folder (bypassed Recycle Bin as folder to large)
3. began a search to find software to recover deleted files and managed to
repair cd rw drive by reinstalling Roxio and updating it as what I had been
using was to old and incompatible
4. tried several trial recovery programs and finally found one that would
recover a portion of what I'd lost because of course I'd still been working
on my laptop and had overwritten and corrupted some of what i'd lost
4. now this is the point where i think I really put the nail in the coffin,
because my machine was taking too long to complete simple tasks I decided to
go back to a earlier restore point as I had in the midst installed mcafee
which had added to my performance woes and also SP2 update
5. I happily returned to my earliest restore point and proceeded to recover
my deleted music files to my new trusty flash USB drive which was fine until
it got to the point where I was planning to do my complete restore and I
realise that I have lost my cd rw again. ok i think I will just undo restore
and return to where things where ok-ish, oh no system restore won't even
open, tried startup, control panel the furthest it got was a blank box.
6. very stuck now so decide to try & download the roxio software from the
internet, get the cd-rw working again and just wipe the nightmare clean, oh
no system seriously crashes so I press the on off to reset and when it tries
to boot up I have "Primary hard disk drive not found, fixed optical drive
not found" "no bootable devices"
It gives me setup option or boot menu but will not let me F8 into safe
mode!!!!
I know this was extremely long-winded but wanted to give the full picture if
anyone has any advice (besides give it up as a bad job) please I would
greatly appreciate it!!
This is slightly long-winded but I will try to explain! I am using a Dell
Inspiron 8100 with Windows XP Home Edition bought in 2001 PIII 1.20
GHz/800MHz, Level 2 cache 512 KB, Mem 128 MB
I have been having problems for a while i.e. system running ridiculously
slow, some program crashes etc. I'd put this down to having a build up of
rubbish, fragmented files, bits of letover programs etc (haven't been
partcularly meticulous with maintenance or backup) also I had an extensive
music library and pictures all of this I attributed to laptop's zero
performance.
So I decided I would obtain all in importance info and do a complete restore
to start a fresh, this is where my problems have gone from worse to worse;
1. tried to back up to cd, only to find drive not writeable, so proceeded to
purchase a USB flash drive
2. in the meantime whilst trying to solve the problem with cd rw drive i
deleted my 'My Music' folder (bypassed Recycle Bin as folder to large)
3. began a search to find software to recover deleted files and managed to
repair cd rw drive by reinstalling Roxio and updating it as what I had been
using was to old and incompatible
4. tried several trial recovery programs and finally found one that would
recover a portion of what I'd lost because of course I'd still been working
on my laptop and had overwritten and corrupted some of what i'd lost
4. now this is the point where i think I really put the nail in the coffin,
because my machine was taking too long to complete simple tasks I decided to
go back to a earlier restore point as I had in the midst installed mcafee
which had added to my performance woes and also SP2 update
5. I happily returned to my earliest restore point and proceeded to recover
my deleted music files to my new trusty flash USB drive which was fine until
it got to the point where I was planning to do my complete restore and I
realise that I have lost my cd rw again. ok i think I will just undo restore
and return to where things where ok-ish, oh no system restore won't even
open, tried startup, control panel the furthest it got was a blank box.
6. very stuck now so decide to try & download the roxio software from the
internet, get the cd-rw working again and just wipe the nightmare clean, oh
no system seriously crashes so I press the on off to reset and when it tries
to boot up I have "Primary hard disk drive not found, fixed optical drive
not found" "no bootable devices"
It gives me setup option or boot menu but will not let me F8 into safe
mode!!!!
I know this was extremely long-winded but wanted to give the full picture if
anyone has any advice (besides give it up as a bad job) please I would
greatly appreciate it!!