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I am sorry to report that my own computer has suffered an yet undetermined severe failure and I can only boot it in Safe Mode. All attempts at normal startup cause BSOD. Therefore I will be forced to borrow my father's computer to play WoW / census. This means that I will not be able to hold up even my previous result levels.

At this time, I can not determine, whether my old computer can still be saved by some miracle or do I require a new one... nor how long this situation will continue.

I am well aware this will not help things, as we are already low on submissions. Also, my apologies to Balgair, who now has even heavier load on her shoulders as the last remaining "power user"...

Unhappy Epic Censi,
signing off for the night

Good luck with the computer!

Get well soon

That sucks, hope your pc is fixed soon!

An update: My old computer is now completely non-bootable (blue screens or freezes, even Safe Mode no longer works) and I am now typing this on a brand spanking new machine... :/

I have gotten Firefox and anti-virus software sorted, WoW is now downloading and I should be back up to speed in a couple days. The remaining headaches consist of figuring out a suitable repair shop to try to salvage data from the old machine. :/

The previous time I acquired a new computer, I had plenty of backups, because the hard drive had been giving ample warning of problems. This time, there was absolutely no prior warning and the hard drive contains significant amount of new data that doesn't exist elsewhere.

Despite my troubles, I wish everyone happy censusing!

Can't you just mount the old HDD as slave in new PC and copy data yourself?

Actually, I did consider that option.

But.. Well... my old computer is old... and the new one apparently might not have a correct connection anymore... also... though I don't know what caused the old computer to go haywire, one suggested reason on internet was a very bad viral infection. Though unlikely, I am not risking my new computer, especially since it was expensive compared to my current income level despite being on sale.

On the other hand, I expect it serve me well for many years. My two previous machines gave about 8 years of service each.

Here is some help for possibly recovering your data.

1st check your old machine with a memory tester.. I recommendhttp://www.memtest.org/ where you can download either a floppy disk image or a CDrom bootable image. While you might have a virus problem.. it could also just be a memory issue, the computer world is discovering as they squeeze the chips to smaller and smaller sizes that random cosmic ray strikes (which happen every where all the time) can and do cause memory chips to fail. All the big super fast machines and nearly all server class machines now default to Error correcting memory, but home/office/game machines still use the cheaper memory that won't detect when memory chips go bad with random bit flips.

Unplug your Hard Drive.. and just boot from the image.. assuming the computer passes all tests, you will know your hardware is still ok and the problem is on the Hard Drive.

Once you have verified the rest of the hardware works.. buy, beg, borrow, or hmm (ok maybe not here [steal]) the smallest, cheapest hard drive you can find. And install Linux on the computer. This will allow you to sand box the windows drive and use anti-virus tools to test the drive without concern for cross computer contamination. OR even better.. find a friend who is a Linux expert and have him check your drive.

After your drive has been declared clean of virus, you can either do a copy from machine to machine or buy a fairly inexpensive adapter card to allow you to install your old drive on your new machine to do a copy of your important files. I have known techs who frequent the local high tech electronics store and after quickly using the purchased item for the one time only use.. return the item to the store for credit. Personally I would never do that.. I'm a pack rat.. I keep those things for the next time... even if I am fairly certain there won't be a next time need for that item.. sigh

Just hope you never get caught like this poor guyhttp://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/ ... n-hacking/ and the follow posting of http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/ ... overy/all/

The moral of his story.. if the info you put on a computer is important to you .. MAKE A BACKUP and store it somewhere else.. that can't get damaged/hacked/destroyed in a local cataclysm.