|
Post by jaydeehess on Dec 29, 2005 1:00:49 GMT -4
Recently my XP Home quit on me. Everytime I tried to start the computer it would get as far as trying to load the desktop and crash. I got the blue screen with the error Page error in non-paged area
However I had a second harddrive with nothing on it so I reloaded XP on that one, tranferred all my saved docuements to the second drive. I lost all my 'favorites' for IE, my adress book and all saved inbox messages in OE and generally was quite frustrated.
I think this all might have happened as my anti-virus + firewall program updated(McAfee)
Does any of this sound familiar to anyone?
|
|
|
Post by LunarOrbit on Dec 29, 2005 1:30:20 GMT -4
Are you able to boot in safe mode? You could try uninstalling anything that loads at startup from safe mode and see if that fixes the problem.
|
|
|
Post by jaydeehess on Dec 29, 2005 10:11:20 GMT -4
No , it would give the same error in any mode, it would not come up to a previous restore point or boot up in safe mode, always the same error.
All I could do was install XP on the other drive and go from there. I could have re-installed XP on the original drive but that would mean losing al saved docuements.
I has scanned the computer for viruses just the day before this happened. Firewall was up and running.
|
|
Bob B.
Bob the Excel Guru?
Posts: 3,072
|
Post by Bob B. on Dec 29, 2005 11:15:07 GMT -4
... tranferred all my saved docuements to the second drive. I lost all my 'favorites' for IE, my adress book and all saved inbox messages in OE and generally was quite frustrated. Can you still access the files on the old drive? If so, your favorites should be saved in the following folder, C:\Documents and Settings\ user name\Favorites\ Just move the files to the newly created Favorites folder on the new drive. I use Outlook rather than Outlook Express, thus I'm not very familiar with OE. I've done some poking around on my computer and it looks like OE may save its address book in the folder, C:\Documents and Settings\ user name\Application Data\Microsoft\Address Book\ Perhaps you can try moving the files, or if that doesn't work, importing it into the new OE installation. I don't now where your old messages are saved but they have to be there somewhere.
|
|
|
Post by frenat on Dec 29, 2005 11:41:42 GMT -4
Some quick research on this problem points to faulty ram. Try reseating the ram, then switching slots on the ram (especially if you have more than one chip) and then if you have more than one chip, try each one individually. As a lst resort you could try to downclock the ram and or processor. Also if you do still have access to the other drive, you should easily be able to find your favorites, address book and mail. It should all still be there.
|
|
|
Post by echnaton on Dec 29, 2005 12:38:08 GMT -4
This must be catching, the hard drive in one of my office computers died this morning. Completely wiped out.
In addendum to the above advice. The “Application Data” folder is typically hidden. You may need to adjust settings so that you can see the folder.
Your mail files for Outlook Express are stored separately from the address book. On my computer they are in C:\Documents and Settings\USER NAME\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{Long string of Characters}\Microsoft\Outlook Express. Alternatively you could do a search of the C:\Documents and Settings\USER NAME folder for “*.dbx”.
All the OE email and news group files can be restored. If you need any more help with this just say something.
|
|
Bob B.
Bob the Excel Guru?
Posts: 3,072
|
Post by Bob B. on Dec 29, 2005 14:45:00 GMT -4
In addendum to the above advice. The “Application Data” folder is typically hidden. You may need to adjust settings so that you can see the folder. If you don't how to do this, jaydeehess, just open Windows Explorer, select Tools, and then Folder Options. Click the View tab, and then under Hidden files and folders select Show hidden files and folders.
|
|
|
Post by jaydeehess on Dec 29, 2005 17:40:04 GMT -4
Thanks for the input. One of the internet Nazis(the sys admin) ;D at work informed me about the change to allow hidden files to be seen. With Bob's written instructions here though it should be less painful than trying to remember what the admin said.
The admin and the webmaster both said that it could be a bad section of the hraddrive that caused the problem. The webmaster here launched into a tirade about crappy harddrives, that the warranty used to be 3 years on the 10 gig HD's then it was 1 year as Hd's got larger and now the warranty is 6 months and the storage capacity is huge. Made the drives store more at the expense of reliability so rather than do something about reliability they simply shortened the warranty period.
|
|
|
Post by jaydeehess on Dec 29, 2005 17:43:13 GMT -4
BTW, 'internet Nazi' is just a shot at our sys admin who has removed all games from the computers at work, disallowed any downloads without admin permission(not even Adobe, I had to beg for that)
He takes the ribbing good naturedly.
|
|
|
Post by jaydeehess on Dec 29, 2005 23:31:59 GMT -4
Retrieved all the files , addresses and favourites just now.
Will leave the C: drive as is for a while in case I recall something else I want to retreive and then will attempt a re-install of Windows on that drive. It is still the 'master' drive and if I read things correctly, contains many of the system programs so I can't format it.
|
|