Dan Gould Posted February 2 Report Posted February 2 (edited) So this morning my home PC (Windows 7) gave me a "low memory" message. When I shut down Chrome I decided to do a restart - often solves the issue (don't ask). So now it refuses to boot up, I am stuck on a blue screen with the HP logo and invent underneath. It does not get me to an option to open in "safe" mode. Is this thing dead? If it is, 70% of my Percy France audio edited files are dead (the originals are still in dropbox page operated with the Smithsonian). My main back up came from a prior Windows 7 machine which means that countless other things are only accessible thru this PC that won't start up. I do assume another Windows 7 machine would allow that material to be backed up. And oh, audio tracks for March BFT are on that PC too. I still have emails received but some had meta data that would need to be wiped and my audio software is on the dead machine. Advice greatly appreciated. Edited February 2 by Dan Gould Quote
Coda Posted February 2 Report Posted February 2 Press the power key and hold it until it forces the PC to shut down. Once it's fully off then press it again to restart. It may take a while to reboot as it will run a repair on any programs that were open. Quote
Dan Gould Posted February 2 Author Report Posted February 2 1 minute ago, Coda said: Press the power key and hold it until it forces the PC to shut down. Once it's fully off then press it again to restart. It may take a while to reboot as it will run a repair on any programs that were open. I have done that. Two or three times. If its gone 30 minutes since last time, do you think its still repairing ? And there were no open programs when I restarted the first time ... I just realized a little while later that it hadn't rebooted. Thanks. Quote
Coda Posted February 2 Report Posted February 2 In this case you will need to make repairs from the system bios. To do this, restart your PC and when it flashes the bios screen press F8 to enter the advanced boot options. Locate Repair your computer, it may be in the system recovery options section. Click startup repair for it to check and repair errors. Quote
mr jazz Posted February 2 Report Posted February 2 You have everything backed up??? Consider upgrading as Windows 7 is not secure. Quote
JSngry Posted February 2 Report Posted February 2 https://www.ionos.com/digitalguide/server/configuration/how-to-boot-windows-7-in-safe-mode/ In 7, you might have to force Safe Mode. The may or may not be a failed hard drive and you might still have your data and it might be retrievable. Might. Try taking it out and see if your tech contact can rouse it. If they can, good, you haven't lost anything. If not.... We all loved 7, but it's gone. 10 and 11 have a bit of a learning curve, but they work just fine. I strongly urge you to move on there. Quote
Milestones Posted February 2 Report Posted February 2 I hope you can salvage your valuable files. I lost a lot when my last compute died last year, and then I made the switch to Apple--I had so much testimony, including from people very close to me, that it was the superior product. I don't feel qualified to give technical advice (several others have), but I wish you the best of luck. Quote
mikeweil Posted February 2 Report Posted February 2 6 minutes ago, Milestones said: I don't feel qualified to give technical advice (several others have), but I wish you the best of luck. Same here! Quote
Dan Gould Posted February 2 Author Report Posted February 2 1 hour ago, JSngry said: https://www.ionos.com/digitalguide/server/configuration/how-to-boot-windows-7-in-safe-mode/ In 7, you might have to force Safe Mode. The may or may not be a failed hard drive and you might still have your data and it might be retrievable. Wondering how long/how many tmes one should hit that F8 key for Safe mode. Cause it didn't trigger this time and I hit for a while. Quote
gvopedz Posted February 2 Report Posted February 2 There might be a video on Youtube that tells you what to do when the blue screen appears. Quote
Stompin at the Savoy Posted February 2 Report Posted February 2 (edited) You never made a rescue disk for the win 7 machine? (In future, always make a rescue disk!) You can probably boot from any rescue disk or bootable disk you have around (not necessarily a win 7 disk) and at least get a look at your hard drive and see if you can get the files off. You can also try some generic emergency repair disks like this Think about getting a portable external USB hard drive, such as a 4TB drive. When you get your files back, back them up to the drive so you are not dependent on one drive. Edited February 2 by Stompin at the Savoy Quote
Dan Gould Posted February 2 Author Report Posted February 2 Thanks to all ... I ended up speaking to a local company about their services/prices and I mentioned not getting into safe mode or anything. She said try F2 for HP diagnostics and .... I booted up completely normally. Backing up critical files right now to my wife's 2 TB flash drive she had bought for herself. Going to also back up critical files I have on the previous 7 machine I had converted to an external hard drive. It was only readable from another Windows 7 machine but this flash drive should work anywhere. Probably double up on those for safekeeping in the end. So relieved right now. Quote
JSngry Posted February 2 Report Posted February 2 That's interesting that it was fixable thru the HP utility and not anything genetically Windows. Glad you got everything back so (relatively) easily! Did you get any indication of what was causing the trouble? Quote
Stompin at the Savoy Posted February 2 Report Posted February 2 (edited) When you get a chance, make a windows repair disk. (I think 7 may also allow a thumb drive repair disk). With a repair disk you can keep an aging hard drive limping along for quite a while. Keep in mind that all mechanical hard drives will fail completely sooner or later. How long depends on how much use. If you use it a lot, maybe 5 to 8 years. Assume it will fail and keep backups. Edited February 2 by Stompin at the Savoy Quote
JSngry Posted February 2 Report Posted February 2 And maybe start planning for a transition out of Windows 7... Quote
Dan Gould Posted February 2 Author Report Posted February 2 You guys will laugh at this but I have two more recent machines as back up but haven't ever swapped them out. I may very well think about that this weekend. Quote
JSngry Posted February 2 Report Posted February 2 Yeah, Microsoft no longer supports 7, so if you're "current" on your updates, this is as good as it will ever get. Quote
Milestones Posted February 2 Report Posted February 2 I'm glad it worked out. Computers are scary things, but we've reached the point where we can't live without them. Quote
Dan Gould Posted February 2 Author Report Posted February 2 3 minutes ago, Milestones said: I'm glad it worked out. Computers are scary things, but we've reached the point where we can't live without them. Yeah and I have really been terrible about backing things up especially using an out of date PC for audio editing of which there has been so much from the Smithsonian/Leonard Gaskin archive. Their raw files live in a dropbox page but I did a hell of a lot of audio editing to make listenable. Quote
mjzee Posted February 3 Report Posted February 3 On my Mac, I run a program called SuperDuper. It automatically backs up my hard drive to an EHD every morning. You should look for something similar for Windows. Quote
mr jazz Posted February 3 Report Posted February 3 Glad you're back. So, plan to upgrade, there are lots of bad people out there who will steal your data so you need current updates. External storage in multiple terrabyte capacity is fairly cheap. Keep an eye on slickdeals for periodic deals, best buy often has good pricing. I've been happy with my Western Digital products over the years. Quote
ejp626 Posted February 5 Report Posted February 5 Glad to hear you got it back at least once more and backed up your files. I had a few scares with my work laptop. It finally gave up the ghost, but I had backed up the download folder (which doesn't get backed up on company servers) the day before, whereas the main documents folder is backed up each evening into the cloud. I'm generally ok with backing up files on my home computer. I try to make sure everything is on two different external hard drives, but I am not perfect about it. I also don't store the 2nd hard drive in a different location, which I should definitely start doing. Quote
Kevin Bresnahan Posted February 6 Report Posted February 6 In my experience, a blue screen of death is often an early warning sign that your hard drive is dying. If you want to keep using that machine, there are (free) programs that allow you to clone your existing hard drive onto a new one. I would not necessarily recommend doing that with a Windows 7 machine, but if that's what you have, that's what you clone. I have two backup hard drives with my current Windows 10 system cloned onto them. If my current hard drive dies, I can still get back up & running. Quote
Dan Gould Posted February 6 Author Report Posted February 6 Thanks to all for their suggestions, thoughts and prayers. Quote
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