Posted by Steve Sieren on March 23, 2009 at 1:53 PM
I made the swap to CS4 last week and could not open files from the 5d m2 so I downloaded a camera raw update and noticed this morning that everthing was running slow so shut the down the pc. Now when I start the thing up again I get a message saying that windows did not start properly due to a hardware of software change. I already restarted the pc last week after loading cs4 so I'm guessing it was the update that was installed last night. It said it couldn't complete the update and to shut down bridge or cs4 so I did but it still could not finish so I shut it this morning and now at this point when I start windows normally and the screen gets stuck with the win xp logo with the bar under it showing it's doing something.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Posted by John De Bord on March 23, 2009 at 2:10 PM
start-programs-accessories-system tools-system restore Is your friend :)
Posted by Steve Sieren on March 23, 2009 at 2:19 PM
Thanks John, but I can't even get to my desktop. I'm using my laptop right now.
I only have acess to the pc at start up while it's booting or beginning to load windows.
Disconnect printers, scanners and other periferal devices, including your modem and/or router. Boot into Safe Mode. If you have a registry cleaner app (such as Registry Mechanic), run that. Shut down the PC, Next, boot normally. If you stll have problems, shut down and then boot into Safe Mode again. Run System Restore. Choose a date and Time between the time you installed CS4 and the Camera Raw update.
If this doesn't work, we'll investigate further by attempting to look at the Event Viewer for specific errors.
I feel your pain!
-Preston
Posted by Steve Sieren on March 23, 2009 at 3:56 PM
Thanks Preston, I'm looking into all that stuff now.
I dont' have a registry cleaner app.
Posted by Steve Sieren on March 23, 2009 at 4:09 PM
I'm not really sure I know how to run system restore or get to that point but I can see how to change the date and time in the system menu.
What system are you running? At this moment I am in the process of repairing a Dell PC with Vista 64 bit system(I'm working on a backup system.) I will have to reinstall all programs, scanners and printers due to a video card corruption. Not what I expected after paying $3,000 for the PC
A window will open. Choose "Restore my computer to an earlier date and time". Click Next.
You'll see a calendar. Dates when restore points were created are in bold type. Select a date by selecting it. Click Next. Windows will show you the Date and time you selected. Click next. Windows will gather the restore info and then shut down your machine. It will automatically reboot. Once the restore is finished, System Restore will tell you whether or not it was successful.
If you want to create a restore point, you can elect to do this in the first system restore window.
-P
Posted by Steve Sieren on March 23, 2009 at 8:54 PM
thanks guys. I'm showing drive failure so I'm just going to bring it in somewhere. Can't even get to a start menu.
I've got a Dell xps 400 desktop running windows XP. I've got a sata hard drive so not sure what that means but every thing is backed photo wise but not sure if I'll be losing all my programs. Oh well, I've got hard copies of those. If the hard drive did crash it lasted 2 years and 9 months.
Sorry to hear that, Steve. If you take it to a tech, see if they can at least retrieve your documents and photos. They'll likely have to replace the drive and reinstall Windows for you. Ask them do install all the updates for XP.
Once you get the clean machine back, you'll need to install all your programs and devices such as printers, etc.. Once all this is done and everything is working, restore your data from the backup.
Reinstalling will take some time, but it will be worth it. Chances are, if the old drive has bad sectors, some of your system files or program files are damaged, so starting clean on a new drive is good.
-P
ps: Install a larger capacity drive while you're at it.
If indeed you have a failed drive, I would borrow from what I do when building a file server or other high performance machine. Install three separate hard drives. A small C drive, I guess by today's standards that means 40-80 gb. This drive will store only the operating system files. A second drive, 80-160 gb will be used for program and temp file storage. Finally a huge drive, 500gb to 1tb for data storage. The data drive can be a single discrete drive, or it can be a RAID array. Once Windows is up and running you right click on My Documents and relocate it to the third drive. This way, if you lose a system drive the damage is minimal. There are performance benefits to keeping the data and programs on separate files.
Before you start buying and installing drives, I suggest that you hop over to Dell's support site and/or consult your user's guide and find out if you enough bays for the extra drives, whether or not your current power supply will handle the extra load, and if your current BIOS wil recognize huge drives--some won't.
Gene's advice to have your OS and program files on two different drives is good. However, be sure the OS (C:\) drive is larger. Some programs will insist on installing on the root drive, i.e. you won't be able to change the install location to another drive, so you'll need to have room for those.
If you have only the option for two drives, I suggest that you put the OS and programs on the root drive, and data on the other. You could partition the second (data) drive into two partitions and use the second partition for your PhotoShop Scratch drive.
The other option is a RAID array, as Gene suggests. A mirrored RAID uses two drives of equal size. Data bytes that are written to one drive are automatically written to the second drive; hence the term 'mirrorred'. If either drive fails, you haven't 'bought the farm', so to speak. RAID arrays can be either 'hardware' or 'software'. Your tech can help you with this piece, if you decide to go this route.
I hope you get this sorted out. Let us know what happened, and how it was resolved.
-P
Posted by Paul DeCesare on March 25, 2009 at 12:02 AM
Steve, it's likely your Master Boot Record on the drive got corrupted during the initial mess. Without that "key to your car", the engine won't start. Most of your files should be recoverable, but reformat and reinstallation of windows and your programs is the fix. At this point a new drive is advisable, and they are CHEAP right now (Seagate or Western Digital 500GB 7200rpm drives at Newegg.com for $59.99 with free shipping). I'd get a new drive and get Windows reinstalled pronto. Then you can deal with recovering the files from the crippled drive.
To recover your user files off of your crippled drive, you can pay GeekSquad or someone else to do the job, but they usually charge pretty good for that service. If you had access to another PC (a friend's, etc) that you could plug your drive into to at least "see" the files, there are utilities you can run to get your files back. I helped a friend recover all his stuff using GetDataBack - NTFS. It worked very well. You load that software on a good PC that also has your crippled drive attached, and it'll let you scan the bad drive and grab all your files and copy them to the temporary PC's drive. Then you can burn them to DVD, etc.
If this all sounds like too much to deal with that's understandable. For a price you can have a PC fixit place do the work for you. But if you want to give it a go, between Preston and/or me, we can get you through it. He's obviously more than just a power user based on all the great info he wrote above.
Once you're back up and running, then we'll talk about ghosting your hard drive. If that had been done with a simple $49 software utility (Acronis TrueImage), you'd already have your PC back up and running by now. We'll be happy to tell you how that's done once you're back in business.
Posted by Steve Sieren on March 26, 2009 at 11:28 AM
Thanks for all the help guys. I bought an up to date Dell but I am going to have to do some of the stuff you're mentioning so I'll get back you guys as soon as am all caught up with work and getting running on a desktop.
Thanks.
One thing I'm having trouble with at the moment is running 2 monitors. I can get both working at start up but the viewsonic stops just after startup and the dell monitor stays running which I just want as the B monitor for all the photoshop boxes.
Steve, I just now saw this reply. Did you get the two monitors going? First thing I would do is make sure your video card drivers are the latest. You'll want to check on the Dell site for those, they won't show up in Windows Update most likely. Then we can verify some display settings once your drivers are up to date.
Discussion
14 repliesAny help would be greatly appreciated.
I only have acess to the pc at start up while it's booting or beginning to load windows.
Disconnect printers, scanners and other periferal devices, including your modem and/or router. Boot into Safe Mode. If you have a registry cleaner app (such as Registry Mechanic), run that. Shut down the PC, Next, boot normally. If you stll have problems, shut down and then boot into Safe Mode again. Run System Restore. Choose a date and Time between the time you installed CS4 and the Camera Raw update.
If this doesn't work, we'll investigate further by attempting to look at the Event Viewer for specific errors.
I feel your pain!
-Preston
I dont' have a registry cleaner app.
Rob
Click Start
>All Programs
>Accessories
>System Tools
>System Restore
A window will open. Choose "Restore my computer to an earlier date and time". Click Next.
You'll see a calendar. Dates when restore points were created are in bold type. Select a date by selecting it. Click Next. Windows will show you the Date and time you selected. Click next. Windows will gather the restore info and then shut down your machine. It will automatically reboot. Once the restore is finished, System Restore will tell you whether or not it was successful.
If you want to create a restore point, you can elect to do this in the first system restore window.
-P
I've got a Dell xps 400 desktop running windows XP. I've got a sata hard drive so not sure what that means but every thing is backed photo wise but not sure if I'll be losing all my programs. Oh well, I've got hard copies of those. If the hard drive did crash it lasted 2 years and 9 months.
Once you get the clean machine back, you'll need to install all your programs and devices such as printers, etc.. Once all this is done and everything is working, restore your data from the backup.
Reinstalling will take some time, but it will be worth it. Chances are, if the old drive has bad sectors, some of your system files or program files are damaged, so starting clean on a new drive is good.
-P
ps: Install a larger capacity drive while you're at it.
Before you start buying and installing drives, I suggest that you hop over to Dell's support site and/or consult your user's guide and find out if you enough bays for the extra drives, whether or not your current power supply will handle the extra load, and if your current BIOS wil recognize huge drives--some won't.
Gene's advice to have your OS and program files on two different drives is good. However, be sure the OS (C:\) drive is larger. Some programs will insist on installing on the root drive, i.e. you won't be able to change the install location to another drive, so you'll need to have room for those.
If you have only the option for two drives, I suggest that you put the OS and programs on the root drive, and data on the other. You could partition the second (data) drive into two partitions and use the second partition for your PhotoShop Scratch drive.
The other option is a RAID array, as Gene suggests. A mirrored RAID uses two drives of equal size. Data bytes that are written to one drive are automatically written to the second drive; hence the term 'mirrorred'. If either drive fails, you haven't 'bought the farm', so to speak. RAID arrays can be either 'hardware' or 'software'. Your tech can help you with this piece, if you decide to go this route.
I hope you get this sorted out. Let us know what happened, and how it was resolved.
-P
To recover your user files off of your crippled drive, you can pay GeekSquad or someone else to do the job, but they usually charge pretty good for that service. If you had access to another PC (a friend's, etc) that you could plug your drive into to at least "see" the files, there are utilities you can run to get your files back. I helped a friend recover all his stuff using GetDataBack - NTFS. It worked very well. You load that software on a good PC that also has your crippled drive attached, and it'll let you scan the bad drive and grab all your files and copy them to the temporary PC's drive. Then you can burn them to DVD, etc.
If this all sounds like too much to deal with that's understandable. For a price you can have a PC fixit place do the work for you. But if you want to give it a go, between Preston and/or me, we can get you through it. He's obviously more than just a power user based on all the great info he wrote above.
Once you're back up and running, then we'll talk about ghosting your hard drive. If that had been done with a simple $49 software utility (Acronis TrueImage), you'd already have your PC back up and running by now.
Thanks.
One thing I'm having trouble with at the moment is running 2 monitors. I can get both working at start up but the viewsonic stops just after startup and the dell monitor stays running which I just want as the B monitor for all the photoshop boxes.