Completely screwed over- Now merits and demerits of various OSs

[Easykill]

I had been experimenting with a Vista-Ubuntu dual boot system recently, and it seemed to work pretty well. Today though, I was having some problems with my iPod and downloaded an update for Vista as one of the steps on the apple site. Problem is, when I restarted my computer, nothing booted up. It just showed a flashing _ at the top of the screen. I had some ancient back-up disks, but they didn't even get a response. I'm posting this from my mom's laptop, do any of you have some advice? My computer I can live without; my music, I can't.

 

[Droshi]

I'm not sure what to tell you there. I personally would boot from the Vista disc and attempt a full repair of the install. Since everything stopped working after the Vista update, that is your best bet. Especially if you can't even access Ubuntu, which is a bit strange.

 

[Fineldar]

I have a list of command lines written out that I used to use, but I don't think it would work for Vista or Ubuntu. I'm not really into Pokemon.

I would suggest booting straight from a disk.

Do you have a floppy in the drive?

 

[Roffey123]

I'm thinking it may be a harddisk error, which isn't good news for your music. Try and do a repair with your Vista Install disk like Droshi says, but I wouldn't be suprised if the HDD has waved a little white flag and gone to HDD heaven.

Sad to say, but its the most likely scenario that your HDD is gone. That blinking "_" is your PC's motherboard trying to find a harddisk to boot from, which means it can't find the harddisk at all. Your best bet is to try and get the data recovered from places like PC world, that is, if the platters haven't been damaged.

Otherwise I really feel for you, the same thing happened to my old HDD a while back. I lost all my applications, my work and my music (thankfully the majority had been backed up) - it cost me £80 for the two HDDs to replace it (I couldn't wait for a cheap solution); life likes to throw s*** at people.

 

[Zer_]

I had been experimenting with a Vista-Ubuntu dual boot system recently, and it seemed to work pretty well. Today though, I was having some problems with my iPod and downloaded an update for Vista as one of the steps on the apple site. Problem is, when I restarted my computer, nothing booted up. It just showed a flashing _ at the top of the screen. I had some ancient back-up disks, but they didn't even get a response. I'm posting this from my mom's laptop, do any of you have some advice? My computer I can live without; my music, I can't.

Bolded the problems you have. When I say "Apple" I really mean iTunes. iTunes is a load of crap, and as such I use alternatives for my iPod. I use Winamp.

Oh and get an External HDD. Putting your OS on a seperate physical HDD is the best way to protect your important files.

 

[Captin Planet]

I sadly think you might need to shoot off to the repair man if you cant get into the bios or into to dos and run in safe mode. maybe your screen has kicked the bucket have you checked that? I know it sounds silly but always good to check all your cables ect. I dont suggest seeking out tech support as they probably wont know whats wrong, to many variables just head to the repair man is all i can suggest sorry to hear about your misfortune.

 

[Zer_]

I sadly think you might need to shoot off to the repair man if you cant get into the bios or into to dos and run in safe mode. maybe your screen has kicked the bucket have you checked that? I know it sounds silly but always good to check all your cables ect. I dont suggest seeking out tech support as they probably wont know whats wrong, to many variables just head to the repair man is all i can suggest sorry to hear about your misfortune.

It's not his screen, trust me. He stated it displays a flashing "_" which means there's something preventing the PC from booting the OS. If your HDD is indeed dead, I recommend keeping it. Install a new HDD or use someone else's temporarily to see if you can access your busted HDD as a slave. I remember one of my drives died, but I was able to recover nearly everything on it without issues.

 

[Captin Planet]

I sadly think you might need to shoot off to the repair man if you cant get into the bios or into to dos and run in safe mode. maybe your screen has kicked the bucket have you checked that? I know it sounds silly but always good to check all your cables ect. I dont suggest seeking out tech support as they probably wont know whats wrong, to many variables just head to the repair man is all i can suggest sorry to hear about your misfortune.

It's not his screen, trust me. He stated it displays a flashing "_" which means there's something preventing the PC from booting the OS. If your HDD is indeed dead, I recommend keeping it. Install a new HDD or use someone else's temporarily to see if you can access your busted HDD as a slave. I remember one of my drives died, but I was able to recover nearly everything on it without issues.

I agree with you 100% but it never hurt to check every element. I think your spot on that its the HDD i would follow this advice first actually before giving up and going to the repair man.

 

[Ancalagon]

I sadly think you might need to shoot off to the repair man if you cant get into the bios or into to dos and run in safe mode. maybe your screen has kicked the bucket have you checked that? I know it sounds silly but always good to check all your cables ect. I dont suggest seeking out tech support as they probably wont know whats wrong, to many variables just head to the repair man is all i can suggest sorry to hear about your misfortune.

It's not his screen, trust me. He stated it displays a flashing "_" which means there's something preventing the PC from booting the OS. If your HDD is indeed dead, I recommend keeping it. Install a new HDD or use someone else's temporarily to see if you can access your busted HDD as a slave. I remember one of my drives died, but I was able to recover nearly everything on it without issues.

If you have or can download a Ubuntu live CD, you could boot up off that (make sure that your BIOS is set to boot from CD first), and then if your hard drive is still accessible from that, you can drag and drop the files you need to keep on to some other media, then reinstall your OSes. Also, if the problem is just with your Master Boot Record, then I guess reinstalling GRUB or whatever bootloader you use might get you back up and running. If you use the live CD and you can't access the hard drive at all, I'd guess it's probably not going to be recoverable without considerable cost. And if the live CD won't boot, you know that the problem's somewhere else.

 

[Droshi]

I sadly think you might need to shoot off to the repair man if you cant get into the bios or into to dos and run in safe mode. maybe your screen has kicked the bucket have you checked that? I know it sounds silly but always good to check all your cables ect. I dont suggest seeking out tech support as they probably wont know whats wrong, to many variables just head to the repair man is all i can suggest sorry to hear about your misfortune.

It's not his screen, trust me. He stated it displays a flashing "_" which means there's something preventing the PC from booting the OS. If your HDD is indeed dead, I recommend keeping it. Install a new HDD or use someone else's temporarily to see if you can access your busted HDD as a slave. I remember one of my drives died, but I was able to recover nearly everything on it without issues.

If you have or can download a Ubuntu live CD, you could boot up off that (make sure that your BIOS is set to boot from CD first), and then if your hard drive is still accessible from that, you can drag and drop the files you need to keep on to some other media, then reinstall your OSes. Also, if the problem is just with your Master Boot Record, then I guess reinstalling GRUB or whatever bootloader you use might get you back up and running. If you use the live CD and you can't access the hard drive at all, I'd guess it's probably not going to be recoverable without considerable cost. And if the live CD won't boot, you know that the problem's somewhere else.

Very nice thinking.

 

[Ancalagon]

If you have or can download a Ubuntu live CD, you could boot up off that (make sure that your BIOS is set to boot from CD first), and then if your hard drive is still accessible from that, you can drag and drop the files you need to keep on to some other media, then reinstall your OSes. Also, if the problem is just with your Master Boot Record, then I guess reinstalling GRUB or whatever bootloader you use might get you back up and running. If you use the live CD and you can't access the hard drive at all, I'd guess it's probably not going to be recoverable without considerable cost. And if the live CD won't boot, you know that the problem's somewhere else.

Very nice thinking.

What can I say? I've broken a lot of computers.

 

[Jaythulhu]

If the hdd was dead though, his computer would come up with a "No system disk found error". Had that recently when my primary os drive failed.

Sounds to me like maybe the master boot records have gotten corrupted, and the computer is confusing itself trying to load two operating systems at the same time.

I don't quite understand why there's so much hate dumped on vista. I've never had a problem with it, and I get better performance than I did in xp. Every whinge I've heard about it, I've heard regarding xp, 2k, ME (which was rubbish), 98se, 95, 3.11, 3...... etc etc.

 

[Droshi]

If the hdd was dead though, his computer would come up with a "No system disk found error". Had that recently when my primary os drive failed.

Sounds to me like maybe the master boot records have gotten corrupted, and the computer is confusing itself trying to load two operating systems at the same time.

I don't quite understand why there's so much hate dumped on vista. I've never had a problem with it, and I get better performance than I did in xp. Every whinge I've heard about it, I've heard regarding xp, 2k, ME (which was rubbish), 98se, 95, 3.11, 3...... etc etc.

Same here. I loved XP but my new laptop equipped with Vista works amazingly.

From my experience, Vista is awesome if you have a large amount of RAM (I've got 3GB). For machines with less memory, XP is probably the best solution. I know Vista Basic came with with my Desktop PC, and it was a mess. Crashed randomly all the time. That computer only has 768MB of RAM, though.

 

[LewsTherin]

http://www.xkcd.com/178/

Ahem...

Apologies abound.

 

[Ancalagon]

If the hdd was dead though, his computer would come up with a "No system disk found error". Had that recently when my primary os drive failed.

Sounds to me like maybe the master boot records have gotten corrupted, and the computer is confusing itself trying to load two operating systems at the same time.

It does seem like the most likely cause of the problem. Still if that is the problem, then restoring the MBR and GRUB should clear it up, unless the problem that corrupted the MBR also affected one or both of the operating systems. So if he boots from the Live CD and restores GRUB, that should sort it all out.

Instructions for reinstalling GRUB from a live CD, or from an installation CD:

http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-24113.html

 

[cleverlymadeup]

From my experience, Vista is awesome if you have a large amount of RAM (I've got 3GB). For machines with less memory, XP is probably the best solution. I know Vista Basic came with with my Desktop PC, and it was a mess. Crashed randomly all the time. That computer only has 768MB of RAM, though.

that's the issue tho, it NEEDS more cpu power and more ram, for what vista does there's nothing in vista that requires it, that's the issue with all m$ products, they keep needing more power, where stuff like linux just likes more power

as for the topic on hand, it does sound like a mbr that was messed up

 

[Jaythulhu]

that's the issue tho, it NEEDS more cpu power and more ram, for what vista does there's nothing in vista that requires it, that's the issue with all m$ products, they keep needing more power, where stuff like linux just likes more power

How's that different to any other flavour of windows released over the last 20-odd years?

 

[cleverlymadeup]

How's that different to any other flavour of windows released over the last 20-odd years?

nothing but how is that a good thing? it's not good at all, look at other os' and how they perform

linux over the years has kinda slowed down on the same hardware but not that much, funnier still the 2.6 kernel actually sped up on older systems.

 

[Jaythulhu]

How? Look at the advances in hardware. When your hardware is too powerful for the old os, ya need a new os that can use it. Linux is great for some things, but as a gaming platform? Not really.