How I saved myself a trip to the PC repair shop

T_G

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I have a small Eee PC 1050HA laptop, it's only 10" but ideal for trips. Unfortunately a few days ago It slipped from my hand and fell onto the floor. Luckily it was not from great height, and also onto a wooden floor, but it still got a good old whack. I was amazed to see that it still worked to be honest. The computer stayed on for many hours after that, and I used it for surfing. When I shut it down it would not start, after the boot it would show the "your PC was not shutdown correctly" screen, and whatever choice I took (normal start, last known etc...) it would then go to the XP logo screen for 15 seconds or so seconds, and then return to the previous screen. While the XP screen was on I could hear the hard drive do some ticking noise. I knew that mechanical hard drives don't like to be whacked, especially when they are on, so I was expecting the worst. And reading in an Eee forum it seems that they indeed don't like to be dropped. So I prepared myself to bring the computer to the shop and see if they will fix it (still had warranty, so maybe...). But I was pissed off as I did not back up the Eee for quite some while, and there was stuff on it that I needed :(
What saved me is a very clever brother in law, who suggested we try a Linux boot CD. The Eee does not have a CD drive, but I have an adapter and an old CD drive, and used that.

We downloaded the KNOPPIX boot from _ww.knoppix.org and burned a CD, and amazingly, it worked. It recognized the two partitions on the hard drive. One was OK, the other one it could not access. It was still great as I always keep the important stuff on the "empty" partition (not where the operating system is). After copying the files onto an external USB drive (which was recognized without a problem by the Knoppix) we decided to try to fix the hard drive.

We goggled and found _ww.ultimatebootcd.com, it's a boot CD with a whole lot of tools on it. I can't remember exactly which tool we used, but it we tried some and found one that scanned the hard drive, and fixed the bad sectors. There were quite a lot of bad sectors, but they were all fixed. It was quite slow, so I let it run during the night. We then let "the most powerful Tool" scan the disc because we liked the name. After that declared that the disc was fault free I simply rebooted the PC and ta-ta!! it all worked nicely.

We then ran the normal Windows check program, it found a couple of corrupted MP3 and I think a swap file. after that w done a defragmentation and that's it.

So, maybe this information will help you someday :)

TG
 

Lazarus

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Nice "event"!

I find most thorny PC issues can be sorted out by ingenuity and Google, but can't recall ever dropping one (So to speak).
 

T_G

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Tivù said:
Nice "event"!

I find most thorny PC issues can be sorted out by ingenuity and Google, but can't recall ever dropping one (So to speak).


It's my first as well. The downfall (so to speak) of this laptop is that it is so small. It is tiny and lightweight, and we were looking at some pictures and passing it around the living room when it happened. Normal laptops are not usually passed around in one hand...

Will be more careful next time though :)
 

hexah

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T_G said:
It's my first as well. The downfall (so to speak) of this laptop is that it is so small. It is tiny and lightweight, and we were looking at some pictures and passing it around the living room when it happened. Normal laptops are not usually passed around in one hand...

Will be more careful next time though :)

If it has a glossy coating, it would be more likely to slide out of someones hands.

Its also a good reason to get a solid state HDD when the prices become more reasonable. :-pachrist
 

Topper

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Well Done T_G, it makes a change to see the punter winning for a change
 

T_G

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hexah said:
If it has a glossy coating, it would be more likely to slide out of someones hands.

Its also a good reason to get a solid state HDD when the prices become more reasonable. :-pachrist

As it is, it's quite smooth on both sides, but really it came about because I wasn't paying attention to it...

I looked at the solid state HDD, but they are sooooooo much more expensive, it's still a long time before I'll get one. They are apparently shock proof, and generate less heat, but before I dish out 300 Euro or more for a hard drive I want to be sure it lasts a long time. And considering that for less than 300 Euros I can buy a complete Eee PC brand new...
 

Channel Hopper

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The external hard drive used by the other half has some chunky rubber protection sleeve that is moulded to the casing.

If you are using a small lap-top and can't imagine selling it early on, it might be worth gluing a few bits of rubber on the edges.
 

T_G

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1 GigaBlue Quad plus, 1 Dreambox 5620, MOTECK SG2100A DISEqC Motor, 120 cm noname offset dish, Humax 95 cm offset dish and a few UK digiboxes.
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Somewhere where the Sauer is Kraut and the Wurst is Brat
Channel Hopper said:
The external hard drive used by the other half has some chunky rubber protection sleeve that is moulded to the casing.

If you are using a small lap-top and can't imagine selling it early on, it might be worth gluing a few bits of rubber on the edges.

Yeah, that's a good idea! I wonder if there is something ready made for notebooks. Will look around for something.
 
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