Well.. I have some story.

About a 2 weeks ago I asked for some information about using Cakewalk on my laptop and received some excellent replies. If you look back a few pages I'm sure you could find the post with all the details.
My laptop is a Compaq Armada E500 which I bought from ebay and it came with Windows XP and was very happy with it until I tried to use Cakewalk, Media Player with MP3's, and Lyrics. As I stated in my previous post I was getting hesitation, delays, hiccup's, you name it. The suggestions I received from most was to use Vanbasco's midi player which I did. It's a good little program but, it didn't quite play exactly what I had in my Cakewalk sequences and it just didn't sound right to me.
Well, as it turned out, I got intouch with Compaq and explained my problem. After trying a few things they said to me that the Armada E500, which is 500 mhz, was originally made to be used with Windows 98 not Windows XP. I mentioned this to my friend who is a computer nerd, and also an excellent OMB, and he agreed and he said he would install Windows 98 for me, which he had.
On Wednesday we installed Windows 98 and the difference is NIGHT AND DAY. The computer works great with Cakewalk, Media Player, and my lyrics. No hesitation, delays, hiccup's etc. I was amazed and extremely happy.
So if any of you experience the same problems you might want to check and see if you have the operating system that was ment for you computer.
So that's the story with my laptop....there's more.

My desktop.

When I went to boot up my desktop it started to take about 14 minutes to boot up. You read it right...14 minutes. After checking to see if there was a virus, which there wasn't, and trying other things I called Microsoft and they put me through a number of tests. They finally decided I should format my hard drive. I wasn't to happy to hear this because I'm sure most of you at some time have had to do this and it's no picnic.
I have 3 hard drives in my desktop, one of which is a mirror copy of my main drive.
I did the format over the phone with a Microsoft technical support guy...who was in India. It was not easy to understand him all the time, but we got through it.
After we did the format I hung up with him and start the long process of putting everything back into the computer.
Hang in there the story gets better.
I thought that it wouldn't be so bad because I had everything backed up in my second hard drive...so I thought.
When I went to my second hard drive it was EMPTY. That's right. EMPTY. When I formatted my Main drive it also wiped out my back up drive too. I couldn't believe this but, it was true. Man, what a feeling. Now I did have important things also backed up on some CD'S but, not everything. I never expected my back up hard drive to get wiped out too.
My friend the nerd thought it might be the mother board so I took it to an excellent repair guy and he confirmed that it was the motherboard that was bad and that's why it was taking 14 minutes to boot up and it also wiped out and damaged my back up drive while I was formatting my main drive. My main drive which was now formatted and the third drive, which still had other files on it were fine.
So here I am this whole past week trying to get not one but two computers working properly. And I'm still having some problems installing a couple of other things which I won't get into now.

I am totally wiped out. Physically and emotionally. This kind of stuff seems to happen to me about every 12 to 14 months.

I thought that this was a problem inherent with PC's but, after talking with Scotty, he said that he used to use Macintosh exclusively until he started to have similar problems and he switched to a PC.

Have any of you had similar problems? I'd be interested in knowing.

So that's the rest of the story.

Peter


[This message has been edited by Musicman22 (edited 10-16-2005).]

[This message has been edited by Musicman22 (edited 10-16-2005).]

[This message has been edited by Musicman22 (edited 10-16-2005).]

I'm all ears--let's hear it!

Gary

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Travlin' Easy

Go for it.....
Tony Rome

Well...What's up?

Inquiring minds want to know!!!

Hello Peter
If you are using Win98SE then this is a reasonably stable system, providing you do not overload it with to many programs, however a word of warning, due to the way the hard drive has to be formatted for 98 to work, security is virtually none existent compared to 2000/XP, so don’t leave any critical information on there, just in case (Hopefully it will never happen) your Laptop gets stolen.
Regarding Backup then always use an External USB/Firewire Drive, that way you can unplug it before doing anything serious (Reinstallation etc) on your computer. (It can also be used to Backup your Laptop)

Bill

Peter,

I feel your pain. Being a computer tech I understand how frustrating and exhausting fixing what should work FINE is like.

I ditto abacus advise. I have everything near and dear to me backed up on an external hd. Back it up and disconnect it. USB or Firewire works great. As long as your Win98 laptop is not connected to a network you should be fine. You can password protect win98 to keep it safe.

I have repaired both PC's and Macs and find that both have issues. Newer systems seem to be more stable. However, I recall a time when Macs were unbreakable. Not so anymore. I still and always will use external media to back up my important info.

There is comfort in knowing you are not alone. These kinds of time consuming problems happen to all of us.

I used to build computers for people based on how they would use them. I.E. a gaming machine or to do homework on. In todays world a computer is used for EVERYTHING! It plays games, does the internet, works exclusive software for music production and video productions. The list goes on and on. For a system to do all of that it needs alot of power and maintenance. Something we as consumers just do not take the time to do and manufactures are not going to push it as when it breaks they will sell you another!

I wish you well. Hope it all goes smoothly for you.

-Linda

The all easy way of backing up your OS (which ever version that is) Use NORTON GHOST IMAGE. You can be back to day one within 15 minutes. In my case that's Win XP plus all my programs back to the day I saved the image. You just need a spare partition on your HD to save the IMAGE to.
I automatically load the IMAGE back every 2 months to obtain a clean start again.

Peter, along with everyone else here, I can't stress enough the value of backing up.
My computer crasshed and I lost a lot of my
photos of my children as well as a lot of important information....what I do now, is to backup what ever I need to with CD-RW....
they are cheap and you can use them over and over again..back up every couple of weeks or whenever you add new information you feel need to backup...good luck....
Tony Rome

Currently, everything, at least all my data, is backed up on CDs. Ghost Image, along with another backup hard drive, is my next step. I have four computers, two desktops and two laptops, and all data can be transferred very quickly via a USB cable system I purchased a few years ago. In this business, backups are essentual, and a part of everyday life. Backup keyboards, laptops, sound systems, mics, they're all part of making a living in the wonderful world of entertainment.

Cheers,

Gary

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Travlin' Easy

Is it possible to back-up to a DVD?

To Musicman... yes, I have horror stories. Too many. I hate 'pooters.

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Bill
Yamaha PSR2000

Providing the file size is less then the size of the DVD, or the Backup program supports backup over multiple discs, then yes you can.
Hope this helps.

Bill

Thanks for all your responses.

Yes, I'm sure we've all had similar experiences.
Talk about an external drive.....
When I picked up my computer from my repair guy, on the way home I stopped at CompUSA and bought an external drive. It's funny...
John_C, who is not with us anymore, told me to do just that about 2 months ago and of course I never got around to it. If I had, well...
I don't think having Ghost Image would have mattered because like I said, my second hard drive was a mirror of my main drive and when my motherboard went it literally destroyed my mirror drive. Unless I'm wrong about that.

Bill...I won't be using my laptop on the internet, just for my gigs, and only one maybe two programs. I'm glad you mentioned backing the laptop on the external drive too. I didn't think of that.

Again, that's for all you caring responses.

Peter

The advice given here about doing backups is right on the money. I am constantly changing out computers in and out of my network and managing files. I finally settled on using a 120 gig external USB drive along with a great backup program called Genie Soft. The Beauty of this program is that you can create self resoring zip files, you Do not need the original backup porgram for restoral. Cd, Dvd, USB drives , tape, hard drives all can be used for backup & resore.

I no longer keep my important backups in just one place, please don't ask me why - just use a little imagination.

Genie-Soft does offer a free trail program if anyone is intersted. There are other good programs out there as well but for ease of use and flexability this is a winner. I think I paid $49.00 for it.
www.Genie-Soft.com

Jerry

I carry an external 2.5" HD with a USB connection as my back up..It duplicates everything I use for Music...over 100 thousand sequences, over 15 thousand styles, over 15 thousand MP3's.
My soft synths Roland DX1, Hyper Canvas, Super Quartet, Orchestral,...NI B4 and M-Audio Key Rig..
Also my main programs Forte, Powertracks, Acid Pro, Soft Concert,WinAmp, VanBasco, Karawin etc..

If my main Laptop goes down, I am back in business with any computer[with USB].



[This message has been edited by Fran Carango (edited 10-17-2005).]

Wow!!! I wish I had read this thread sooner. If you have not written over either of those two harddrives there is a very good chance you can get your data back. A windows format clears out the index to the files. The files themselves should still be there and can be recovered.

There are some software utilities out there that do this.


Here is one software app that recovers a formatted harddrive I found on Cnet after a quick search. There are many others.
http://www.download.com/3000-2094-10373977.html


Good luck and sorry I didn't see this post sooner.

This looks like a great progam although a little expensive at $129.00
Thanks,

Peter

Recovers a formatted harddrive? Undeletes files "after" you have emptied your recycle bin? So everything I've ever done on my computer is still there? I can even format the hard drive and it's all still there? How about if I fill it up again, reformat it, fill it up again, and format it? Will it still have every file from back when I did the first format? This is weird.

Oops, just reread. You cannot recover once you've started re-writing over the drive. Gees, still, all this time I thought delete actually meant delete, and Format surely meant delete.