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AnneL

AnneL

SPFG, Supreme Picture Framing God
Joined
Jul 11, 2001
Posts
15,946
Loc
Wautoma, WI USA
I'm really hoping I didn't just kill one of our computers! Gary had to leave and he left his computer on with the internet open to Facebook. I went to close it and it was frozen. It wouldn't respond to anything I tried, including ctrl+alt+del.

Being paranoid about viruses and such, I decided to crash it using the power button. I don't like seeing a computer locked while online in case something nasty is in the process of invading it.

When I tried turning it back on it wouldn't boot up farther than the manufacturer's logo. I did that a couple times then noticed there were some external hard drives connected to it that were on, so I turned them off. This time I got it to boot as far as wall paper.

Please tell me there is a way to get it up and running again because if I don't, I'm going to be in big trouble! Gary spent all day working on it and I don't think he had time to back up any of that work to one of the externals before he had to rush off to do something else. :help:
 
Mike? I'd have her go in and make sure her boot options are right and that it's booting from the hard disk. The thing that is throwing me is if she got all of the way to the wallpaper, why didn't the os load everything?
 
Computers will often fail to boot if there are flash drives, floppies, cd's or external drives plugged in. (it will try to boot from those devices first, in most cases. Some will just sit there if they don't see an operating system on the above devices)

Everything is probably fine, unless any of the work was unsaved at the time.

You did the right thing, under the circumstances.

It wouldn't hurt to run a sanity check scan, though. www.malwarebytes.org

Mike
 
Thanks Mike. I plan to run that once Kaspersky is done with what it is doing right now. Luckily the only things open were 2 versions of Mozilla. I'm really going to have to show him how to use tabs again. One was on our business Facebook page where he had just put some new photos yesterday but I couldn't see what the other one was on.

Hopefully it wasn't in the process of sending an order to our photo lab. If it was, I don't think it went through. It could explain why it got locked up though. If the orders are really big, it will sometimes freeze while trying to send. It's a problem with their software, not our system.
 
AnneL said:
but we can't afford the $2000+ it would cost to replace it.
Click to expand...
Strike me lucky, Anne, it must be some high end puter that could cost that much.

Mike is always posting links to $400 puters in the section of the forum!
 
osgood said:
Strike me lucky, Anne, it must be some high end puter that could cost that much.

Mike is always posting links to $400 puters in the section of the forum!
Click to expand...

Specially built to do digital imaging on. It has the maximum amount of memory and speed we could get at the time. We have 2 computers with that dedicated purpose, both specially built. The newer one I had made a couple years ago cost just below $2000 and that was a bargain for what I had put into that machine since I had a local place do it for me. One of the big brand name places would have cost even more.

And that doesn't even include a monitor to go with it. The monitors with the specs we need (good detail and color) run almost as much as the computers!
 
All better. Kaspersky was still scanning when I left last night so I waited till this morning to run Malwarebytes. It found 8 suspicious object and got rid of them for me. I'm still getting heat for tying up his computer while it did the scan. I just can't win.
 
Glad to hear that all is well, Anne!

I don't know how old your puter is, but if it was about 4 years old, and you had to buy a new one with high specs, it's likely that it would cost a lot less than it did then.

With a bit of luck and some good anti-virus and anti malware software it should be OK for a long time yet.
 
or here is a pretty good sounding deal (3.2 is pretty fast box, 3gb mem is a little skinny as is the 500gb hd[can get 1T/@$50]---but these are rather cheaply upgradable)...point is you dont need to go into debt to upgrade yopur system!


Deal of the Day – Dell Inspiron 560 3.2GHz Dual-Core Desktop + 18.5” LCD Monitor
Today’s LogicBUY deal is the Dell Inspiron 560 3.2GHz Intel Dual-core mini tower desktop with 4GB memory and bundled with an 18.5” Dell LCD monitor for $449.99. Features: 16X DVD+/-RW, 500GB hard drive, 19-in-1 card reader, and Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit). It is bundled with a keyboard, mouse, and the IN1920 Dell LCD monitor.

$588.99 – $139 off = $449.99 with free shipping

This deal expires May 24, 2011 or sooner. Check the above link for more details on this deal, and check the LogicBUY home page for other deals.
Deal of the Day – Dell Inspiron 560 3.2GHz Dual-Core Desktop + 18.5” LCD Monitor originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on May 23, 2011 at 9:11 am.
 
Bill, those would be downgrades compared to what we have and what we need. Our primary business is as a photo studio and this is one of our 2 digital image handling computers that needs upgrading. Most off the shelf computers don't have the kind of hardware we looking for in them, even Macs. That's why I've been having our machines built for us. And we don't need the monitors that come with those deals. We need a monitor that can handle the fine detail and exact color balance digital imaging requires.
 
Anne,

once in a while my computer will lock up and I'll have to crash it, kill the power to it. Usually it is related to the USB hub. I'll look at the hub and lights with nothing plugged in will be on and plugged in ports will have no lights.

It's a cheap hub and it has the ability to take down the whole computer at times :) But it is like the windshield wipers on my truck. When it isn't raining the wipers work fine so I don't remember to replace then, then it rains and I think, gotta stop at NAPA :) I know I need to replace the hub, but when it's working I don't remember to pick up a new one.......
 
Bob,

That sounds about right, which reminds me, after spending the entire day yesterday trying to get a large order to the lab only to have the ordering software lose it twice; I need to go to the lab's website and upgrade the software and the Java it runs on.
 
Well, it's acting up again and not booting properly. Gary was at a meeting and when he called, he said it has been doing that for awhile and it some times takes multiple tries to get it running in the morning. And you've let me know about this when? I suspect the power supply is going bad.

So I spent some time looking at specs for digital imaging machines if we should need to replace it. We would most likely be looking at a minimum of $2000 for what we need. The specs I'm seeing are for machines with at least 2 TB on the internal hard drives, 12gb ram, i7 quadcore processors, high performance cooling systems, and Win 7 pro for the operating system. I don't think I'm going to find that on Dell's "deal of the day".
 
you might!

Keep in mind that 2tb hard drives are $60 on sale daily, and memory is about $20 per gb.

When you check out with one of the deals, it lets you customize most aspects of it.

I'm not saying it is impossible to spend $2000 on a pc (especially if it was an APPLE), but it shouldn't be necessary for most.

If the pc that is acting up is a clone, you can also replace the power supply for less than $100. Motherboards are about $100, as well. (i recommend GIGABYTE brand) Hard drives are $35 (500gb) - $100 for about 3tb. newegg.com is where i get my parts.

Mike
 
Actually, the one acting up is a Dell. We've been nursing it for far too long.

So Mike, if I send you the actual specs, can you see if you can find someone who would build it for less than $2000? The parts lists are very specific as to what brands and models to use for best performance/reliability. It comes from someone who works in a photo studio with the programs we need to run and is and expert on building his own computers. When I look at comparable machines from the big brand name places, they are actually closer to $3000-$4000 and have some trade offs as far as parts that aren't quite as good. What I'm looking at is more equivalent to a high end video editing or gaming computer than just a general office computer.
 
Sure I can take a look around

I usually use dell for low end (office use) and clones for high end (home use)
 
Anne, before you rule out Dell, look at the offers in the Precision Workstation section of Small Business. Try customizing one of the $600+/- discount offers.
 
Pat, I'll look at them but we haven't had a lot of luck with name brand off the shelf computers as far as reliability and performance go compared to the custom built ones we've had. If I was looking for a new computer to run Lifesaver, I would definitely look for the cheapest deal that would work for it.

However, we'd be looking for a computer that can run CS5, Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Bridge all at the same time; with possible a couple other photo manipulating/editing programs thrown in. And the latest generation of cameras have bigger file sizes and video capabilities that we need to consider allowing for editing of in the future.

Gary managed to get it to boot up this morning. He seems to know the trick to get it going. He is moving some programs that are only on that one over to our other one.
 
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