Please Help My Mom!

[Oz Chambers]

Got an e-mail from my mom today. She's having some problems with her computer. Any help would be appreciated!! Here is the text of her message.

"Hi, Gregg...have a little problem or two...my computer tells me I'm recovering from a crash, but I'm not so sure I'm recovering. Yesterday I lost Microsoft Money (help!), but I removed the software and then reloaded it, got it back, but a little screwed up. The color is horrible (4 bit?). Can't change it..actually, it won't change. If I leave the computer running for awhile (maybe 30 minutes), I get horrible grey and black vertical stripes all over and the screen has patches of bright colors which turn on and off, where it's impossible to use it. I then have to reboot and then I get back the original stinky color, but I can use it.

Anyway, I'm trying to retrieve my pictures and music from the hard drive and save it to a CD, but I don't know how to do the music, other than make CDs out of it, 15 or so songs at a time...I know there has to be another way! I'm afraid I'll have a total crash and lose everything!

Help???

Mom"

She's using some 7 yr. old computer with an AMD processor. Her music is in i-tunes, but I don't think she has downloaded much of it through i-tunes. Just two weeks ago I was telling her it was time to get another computer. Hopefully, it's not a bad hard drive. I know she has some important stuff on there. Any help is greatly appreciated!!

 

[zagood]

Power supply failing, too many dustbunnies overheating it, or a virus.

Have her open it up (outside) and blow it out with compressed air. Since it's so old, she's probably never cleaned out the inside, and the heatsinks are probably completely clogged with dust. Then have her run a virus scan, shutting off system restore and unplugging from the net.

If you live in the same town, I'd recommend taking her HD out, plugging it into yours and trying to recover data.

-z

 

[Oz Chambers]

Thanks zagood. I'll pass along your suggestions to her since she is living in another town from me. I may go down and see her next weekend. I just built a new computer (first build) and I have two SATA drives in a RAID 1 array and she obviously will have an IDE drive. How do I save data from one type of drive to another? (I'm a bit of a noob myself)
-Oz

 

[Koharski]

haha, did you just call your mom a noob?!

you could allways see if your mobo has an IDE interface, if not take it to a computer shop or find an older computer to plug itr into

 

[zagood]

99.99% of motherboards have at least 1 IDE port (for CD and DVD-Roms), you can always unplug a cd-rom and plug a hard drive in if you need to.

When firing it up for the first time with mom's HD installed, make sure you check that your BIOS boot order is set so that her HD isn't in the boot order at all.

You also may have some issues with the partition names being the same with your HD and hers. Get a freeware data recovery program so that you can avoid that.

-z

 

[Oz Chambers]

Thanks for all the help. she got another hard drive and put most of her important stuff onto it with a little help from my uncle. She says she can't figure out how to get her address book and e-mail onto it though. She has a lot of important messages from publishing houses and such (she works for an author). Any guidance would be appreciated. Thanks again for the help zagood, koharski!!

 

[erikistired]

what email client is she using?

 

[Bozo Galora]

oh, a 7 year old computer?
bleh, just getting broken in.

video anomalies mean dying vidcard/vidcard fan, cpu fan, monitor, bad/loose vid cable or leaking mobo caps, right?

 

[Danywachy]

Man if you love her buy her a new pc. 7 years with the same machine is a crime. Just joking, I had something similar happen with a friends videocard. He was never able to fix it he had ot return it.

 

[Oz Chambers]

I'm pretty sure she's using outlook

 

[Topweasel]

Originally posted by: Oz Chambers
I'm pretty sure she's using outlook

Make sure View all files is enabled in the Folder options.

I thnk this the directory.

C:\documents and...\Noob mom\Application data\Microsoft\outlook\*.pst

Or

C:\documents and...\Noob mom\Local Settings\Application data\Microsoft\outlook\*.pst

the PSTs are the money files.

Outlook Express might be different. HAven't really used that.

 

[pcman83]

I would try a different video card that sounds like the issue.

 

[JackBurton]

If she is running Windows 9x, I don't want to even hear about it.

 

[dBTelos]

Ok, from your original post, this is what I have come up with. From the video problem she is having I would expect bad video card drivers. But then with the other things that seem to be going on, I am also expecting trojans, worms, you get the idea. The first thing you want to do is clean up any potential viruses and spyware. Tell her to "Download, install, update, scan, and remove all the bad guys found by the following in both regular AND safe mode".

http://www.download.com/AVG-Anti-Virus-Free-Edition/3000-2239_4-10342876.html
AVG Anti-Virus

http://www.download.com/Spybot-Search-Destroy/3000-8022_4-10122137.html
Spybot

http://www.download.com/3000-2144-10045910.html
Ad-Aware

http://www.ewido.net/en/
ewido anti-malware

http://vil.nai.com/vil/stinger/
McAfee Stinger (stand-alone (no need to install, just run))

After she did all that in safe and reg. mode, I would expect her to be clean. If she is still getting the video problems, open the device manager and double click the display adapter driver. Select roll-back driver and restart the computer. Still problems? go to the manufacturers website and download the latest driver for your GPU, install, and restart. For backing up music, tell her to create a data disk for the music if she can't clean up her problems with the above measures.

 

[Trey22]

For Outlook backup, BackRex is great... not sure if it's freeware though... I've been using it for about a year now for free.

Edit: Looks like the demo version has enough functionality to be useful.

 

[40Hands]

From my experience those random bars of colors would make me question the graphics card (which is probably built into the mobo)

 

[NaOH]

Originally posted by: Oz Chambers
Got an e-mail from my mom today. She's having some problems with her computer. Any help would be appreciated!! Here is the text of her message.

"Hi, Gregg...have a little problem or two...my computer tells me I'm recovering from a crash, but I'm not so sure I'm recovering. Yesterday I lost Microsoft Money (help!), but I removed the software and then reloaded it, got it back, but a little screwed up. The color is horrible (4 bit?). Can't change it..actually, it won't change. If I leave the computer running for awhile (maybe 30 minutes), I get horrible grey and black vertical stripes all over and the screen has patches of bright colors which turn on and off, where it's impossible to use it. I then have to reboot and then I get back the original stinky color, but I can use it.

Anyway, I'm trying to retrieve my pictures and music from the hard drive and save it to a CD, but I don't know how to do the music, other than make CDs out of it, 15 or so songs at a time...I know there has to be another way! I'm afraid I'll have a total crash and lose everything!

Help???

Mom"

She's using some 7 yr. old computer with an AMD processor. Her music is in i-tunes, but I don't think she has downloaded much of it through i-tunes. Just two weeks ago I was telling her it was time to get another computer. Hopefully, it's not a bad hard drive. I know she has some important stuff on there. Any help is greatly appreciated!!

Why'd you call your mom a noob for not knowing how to fix the problem when you don't either?

Sounds like PSU / Motherboard problems.

 

[Oz Chambers]

Thanks alot for all the work you put into helping. I'm passing it along to her.

 

[Oz Chambers]

Thanks Topweasel. I just got an email from her. She's using Outlook Express, not Outlook. Does that change your answer?

 

[Oz Chambers]

I called myself a noob in my 2nd post.

 

[JackMDS]

7 years ago probably Win 98?

Investing even one $ in a 7 year old computer is a waste of money. If things start to go it would Not Stop.

The best help that you cam offer is to get another computer. You do not need state of the Art (No one seriously benefit from SATA to begin with) you probably can get Box what was ?State of the Art? two years ago for $100-$200.

:sun:

 

[Ctrackstar126]

Is it sad I came into this thread expecting pics?

 

[Oz Chambers]

Latest e-mail from mom:

"Hi, Gregg...Yes, I can use the internet, and I did go to that site. The biggest problem I have now, apart from not retrieving my e-mail is not retrieving any of my documents, such as Word, etc. Since both hard drives are tandem, I can get into my old hard drive (Drive E) and see "Nancy's Folder", but am denied access to it.

Johnnie installed another better video card as well as the hard drive. My picture is perfect and everything is functioning well--just can't get my "stuff".

By the way, I have Norton Internet Protection with Anti-Spam, which tells me I'm virus free.

Love you,
Mom"

Any advice?

 

[imported_Crusader]

Originally posted by: JackBurton
If she is running Windows 9x, I don't want to even hear about it.

Why? Whats the problem, cant get 9X to run properly noob?
Its lasted 7 years, couldnt have been that bad of a rig.