raymac46 Posted July 27, 2014 Share Posted July 27, 2014 I just got a call from my favorite "client" Lillian. According to her when she went to start her computer, it wouldn't go and she got a screen saying there was a recommendation to restore everything to factory settings. So of course she did without calling me first. Now she "doesn't know what to do." I have no idea what she was doing, and I have never had a Windows 7 machine "recommend a factory restore" when you boot it. Has anyone actually seen this? It's an HP all-in-one. I told her she has probably borked all her data and that I shall have to reinstall and reconfigure everything I put on her machine over the past couple of years - Open Office, Browsers, CCleaner, Malware Bytes, her beloved Norton Security....mind boggling. I've told her I need to think this over for a couple of days. Can't face it this weekend. Please help if you have any idea what she might have done to get this recovery screen. Does she have a hardware problem? Or is it strictly between the chair and the keyboard? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted July 27, 2014 Share Posted July 27, 2014 Maybe this was a Black Screen of Death... How to fix the Windows Black Screen of Death Windows 7 Black Screen when booting up Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goretsky Posted July 27, 2014 Share Posted July 27, 2014 Hello, Most important thing for recovering files is to not use the machine at all, if possible. That way if there are any remnants of information on it, they are more likely to be located by data recovery software. Regards, Aryeh Goretsky Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted July 27, 2014 Share Posted July 27, 2014 If you are doing support fro folk why do you not either, a) persuade the client to make a backup of the os when it is set up and at regular intervals on their hdd's do a backup for them on their hdd's c) do a backup for them on your hdd's and charge them a small fee d) tell them you are not willing to offer support if they do not do one of the above Even if the backup is several weeks/months old it is a lot easier to do a reinstall than from scratch. By a backup I mean a full fresh os install with all necessary programs installed. The above is what I do for anyone who asks me to help with pc problems. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted July 27, 2014 Author Share Posted July 27, 2014 I'm going to pick up the machine and give it a thorough disk and memory check. The reinstallation of all the Windows updates could take a while. Then I need to reinstall her security software and all her programs. I assume her data is toast, although I'll check with a recovery disk. Nothing is mission critical so I will do my best short of getting a professional to retreive lost data. This whole job will take hours. I have never in 25 years of working with MS-DOS or Windows ever seen anyone who can screw up a computer worse than Lillian. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted July 27, 2014 Author Share Posted July 27, 2014 If you are doing support fro folk why do you not either, a) persuade the client to make a backup of the os when it is set up and at regular intervals on their hdd's do a backup for them on their hdd's c) do a backup for them on your hdd's and charge them a small fee d) tell them you are not willing to offer support if they do not do one of the above Even if the backup is several weeks/months old it is a lot easier to do a reinstall than from scratch. By a backup I mean a full fresh os install with all necessary programs installed. The above is what I do for anyone who asks me to help with pc problems. Good idea but too late now. In this case I did make a set of recovery disks. If she had simply backed up her data that would be enough. I'll now make a backup image and keep it here just in case. Note that I did not reinstall from scratch. Apparently Lillian did. So a backup on her HDD would have been destroyed when it was reformatted. Any backup has to be on something that is separate from Lillian. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted July 27, 2014 Share Posted July 27, 2014 Sad loss but often it's the only lesson people will hear. She needs an external hard drive where you can make a backup image and do daily backups. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mac Posted July 27, 2014 Share Posted July 27, 2014 Sad loss but often it's the only lesson people will hear. She needs an external hard drive where you can make a backup image and do daily backups. And then convince/coerce her to actually perform the backup Though I think that in this case a weekly backup would be sufficient. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted July 27, 2014 Author Share Posted July 27, 2014 The real coercion I need to do with Lillian is not to do stuff she knows nothing about. If there was ever a candidate for a lockdown it is Lillian. I am sure there is nothing wrong with her computer unless she got another virus. All I really want her to back up is her personal data. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted July 27, 2014 Author Share Posted July 27, 2014 What would you recommend as backup software? I assume she would have the HP backup Manager installed. Bear in mind she needs to go buy it at Staples since her husband won't let her get any payware online. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ross549 Posted July 27, 2014 Share Posted July 27, 2014 How much data are we talking about? If you are primarily concerned with her documents/ pictures, then SpiderOak offers 2GB free and it is fully automated. Adam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted July 27, 2014 Author Share Posted July 27, 2014 I was thinking more about local backup to an external hard drive. I doubt she has more than 2 GB of data, although she did have some photos. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ross549 Posted July 27, 2014 Share Posted July 27, 2014 Yeah, considering your user here... a local drive may not be the best choice, as it could "accidentally" be unplugged. At least with spideroak, the program sits in the system tray, out of the way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted July 27, 2014 Author Share Posted July 27, 2014 (edited) AOMEI Backupper Standard looks like a possibility. One click does it. We are talking about someone who is really too dumb to have a computer, Frankly. I doubt she'd do any backup correctly. Edited July 27, 2014 by raymac46 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ross549 Posted July 27, 2014 Share Posted July 27, 2014 That's why spideroak is great. You tell it what folders to backup, and it takes care of the rest on the fly in the background. No user interaction required. The data is fully encrypted before being backed up too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted July 27, 2014 Share Posted July 27, 2014 (edited) And then convince/coerce her to actually perform the backup Though I think that in this case a weekly backup would be sufficient. No, using Windows 7 Backup, it is done as often as you want automatically. I usually have it set to do Daily backups (I make sure I uncheck creating image with backup), then it set at a convenient time for the user so it's out of their way, but not during a time when the computer is usually off. No fuss, no muss. As for the image, periodically when we get together, I create a new image. Edited July 27, 2014 by LilBambi edited to show how the backups are set up Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted July 27, 2014 Share Posted July 27, 2014 If it's Windows 8.1, I use Windows 8.1 File History and download RecImg Manager, create the folder it saves them to on the external hard drive as noted in RecImg Manager, and then set it up to do it every 4 weeks and create the initial image. Windows 8.1 is much easier because with that free tool, you can set it to create an image on a schedule. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zlim Posted July 27, 2014 Share Posted July 27, 2014 Take your time working on the computer. Lillian will never learn. (I had someone as clueless who I helped for several years then finally gave up). Since you are friends with her husband, you are stuck giving computer support. The longer she is without a computer, the less she can screw up by randomly pressing keys and not bothering to ask anyone what her choices will do. Maybe the loss of files will sink in that when faced with a screen she doesn't understand, the best thing to do is walk away from the computer and get help. You can explain a simple plan to back up her files and impress on her, if she loses her files, it is not your problem to see if she can get them back. You'll keep the computer running free of nasty items and that's it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted July 27, 2014 Share Posted July 27, 2014 There is always COPY to do a in the cloud storage of the full os. 15 GB free as a start and 5 GB for every referral.(check the site as they seem to have changed things slightly)15GB might be a tad small for W7 so you may have to do some referring if you go that route. If she only has 2GB of personal data then you could use a 8 or 16 GB usb stick which are as cheap as chips. As Fran says Win 7 can be set up to do the backups automatically, no idea what Win 8 offers. You could superglue the usb stick to the pc to stop idle fingers (that last bit is a jocular aside) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebrke Posted July 27, 2014 Share Posted July 27, 2014 (edited) I just got a call from my favorite "client" Lillian. According to her when she went to start her computer, it wouldn't go and she got a screen saying there was a recommendation to restore everything to factory settings. So of course she did without calling me first. Now she "doesn't know what to do." I have no idea what she was doing, and I have never had a Windows 7 machine "recommend a factory restore" when you boot it. Has anyone actually seen this? It's an HP all-in-one. I told her she has probably borked all her data and that I shall have to reinstall and reconfigure everything I put on her machine over the past couple of years - Open Office, Browsers, CCleaner, Malware Bytes, her beloved Norton Security....mind boggling. I've told her I need to think this over for a couple of days. Can't face it this weekend. Please help if you have any idea what she might have done to get this recovery screen. Does she have a hardware problem? Or is it strictly between the chair and the keyboard? Do you suppose she could have hit the ESC key during the boot and got into a recovery menu? ESC key may be close to the power button. Seems I read somewhere about use of ESC key for HP. Doesn't matter at this point, I guess, and I think Liz is right--this may teach Lillian not to be quite so impulsive. Edited July 27, 2014 by ebrke Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Capt.Crow Posted July 27, 2014 Share Posted July 27, 2014 I thought I noticed that Firedrive Were giving 50 gigs of free storage on the cloud . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted July 28, 2014 Author Share Posted July 28, 2014 (edited) When I figure out the situation I'll come up with some backup solution. My preferred way would be to make her buy a USB external disk and then set up a simple backup procedure for her HDD. If she's lost all her data she'll do as I ask. Considering my services would have cost her hundreds of dollars over the years she should not complain spending $90 or so on an external drive. At this point I have no idea what she has done, and there's no point in accepting anything she says, since she doesn't know enough to provide any useful diagnostic info. I need to get the machine and see what's needed. Edited July 28, 2014 by raymac46 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frapper Posted July 28, 2014 Share Posted July 28, 2014 Considering my services would have cost her hundreds of dollars over the years she should not complain spending $90 or so on an external drive. Has she ever paid you a cent? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted July 28, 2014 Author Share Posted July 28, 2014 I've gotten the odd bottle of booze or some home made pies over the years. I don't charge my friends for anything like this. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted July 28, 2014 Author Share Posted July 28, 2014 Got the machine here now and I don't see anything obvious. Used a rescue disk to check memory and hard drive - both passed. Her data is toast, but she did have an SD card in a photo frame and some DVDs so we may be able to restore quite a lot of her photos. 132 Windows Updates to go....oy... From the look of it she "succeeded" in restoring all the factory settings - got a bunch of bloatware to delete again. She did seem quite willing to go for a backup external HDD...progress I guess. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted July 28, 2014 Share Posted July 28, 2014 Sounds hopeful on the backup then. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted July 29, 2014 Share Posted July 29, 2014 Yes, very hopeful on the backup. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ross549 Posted July 29, 2014 Share Posted July 29, 2014 If there is not an online backup also, I predict disaster. Adam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted July 29, 2014 Author Share Posted July 29, 2014 (edited) An online backup I fear is not in the cards for two reasons: Both Lillian and Roch are paranoid about security and don't trust any form of online payment, so if they need more than the minimum storage capacity it won't work out. Lillian's paranoia does not prevent routine Malware infestations since she is always downloading "free software." Lillian is too dumb to use any sort of backup routinely but at least I can make sure I have an image here on my external drive. I can probably do one for her once a month or so- better than nothing at all. She scheduled her security scans and Windows Update at 3 AM when her machine was always turned off. Really I'd be happy if she just backed up her data. Her photo overhead is about 5 GB judging by what she had on the SD and the DVDs. As a "cause and effect" guy I am still worried about why this happened. This is a 3 year old computer and doesn't get heavy use. The memory and HDD both look healthy, These all-in-ones tend to run hot, but there's no indication that's causing a problem. Normal users don't have to reinstall Windows, just Lillian runs into situations like this. I suspect she caused some sort of Windows corruption during an update, but who knows? She should have called me to rescue her data, but otherwise I don't know what could have been done to prevent this mess - aside from getting her to run Linux. At least she isn't running a business with her machine. Edited July 29, 2014 by raymac46 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted July 29, 2014 Share Posted July 29, 2014 For those who have security concerns, there is the old off site backup method. Safety Deposit Box. Many folks for years have created a backup that they keep locally and one they put in a Safety Deposit Box in case of a fire. Even if it doesn't have everything, it will have a static backup of everything up to a given date. It's better than nothing. Some folks don't worry about it because if they lose their family photos other family members have copies of them and that's like an off-site back up in its own right. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.