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Desktops: Poll: How many times have you resorted to reformatting...
- 8/3/07 12:20 PM
Poll: How many times have you resorted to reformatting...
by Lee Koo (ADMIN) - 8/3/07 12:20 PM
How many times have you encountered a computer problem where the only fix was to reformat/restore the hard drive and start over?
-- Never have (Wow; please share your secrets of success! )
-- 1-2 (Please describe what happened.)
-- 3-4 (Please describe what happened.)
-- 5-6 (Please describe what happened.)
-- 7-8 (I hope you're talking about a few different systems. Please explain.)
-- More than 8 times (Please do explain.)
Sony's rootkit
by Ck87.JF - 8/3/07 2:08 PM In reply to: Poll: How many times have you resorted to reformatting... by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I had other reasons at the time as well, though for some reason I can't remember, but one of the big reasons I reformatted was to get rid of the Sony rootkit once I discovered the fact that Sony committed such a crime. The CD? Switchfoot's Nothing is Sound.
There's things almost as bad
by jonf57 - 8/3/07 7:26 PM In reply to: Poll: How many times have you resorted to reformatting... by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I have never reformatted my drive but several times I have been advised by various generations of Microsoft support (as it moved further East to China) to do things that required me to reinstall all my programs or reinstall that generation of Windows and do the same thing. Rarely was it ever explained what happened so I presume it was just Windows getting bollixed up for some reason. For example for a few Windows incarnations, Windows didn't like complicated wallpaper and programs that were complicated to display on top of it. Windows would always get bent out of shape; freeze, or something else. I have not installed VISTA because I have heard too many horror stories and my XP system is being very well behaved at present.
Reformatting
by edtrimm - 8/5/07 10:09 AM In reply to: There's things almost as bad by jonf57Hear, hear, Jon. Agreed -- If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I've had to reformat a couple -- three times for reasons known only to God and maybe some pasty-faced programmer in some dark cubby tucked away at Microsoft. But my XP has been behaving as well, and I wouldn't dream of messing with it. Now, if I could just get my Tungsten Palm E2 to resume synching to the expansion card, I'll be one happy computing camper!
How many times have you resorted to reformatting...
by mztweeta - 8/3/07 7:30 PM In reply to: Poll: How many times have you resorted to reformatting... by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I dont know what happened..but one day I couldnt log on to the internet...I figured it was the weather that caused it..so I ignored it..but the next day the same thing happened..and it was like that for about 3 days...finally i decided to call my ISP..who sent me a new modem..same problem ...I called them again and this time they said it wasnt their fault..that I had a virus. So I called DELL...spent hrs with them on the phone (as usual)...only for them to tell me I dont have a virus. So the ISP dunno whats wrong...neither does DELL..but they refused to come look at the pc themselves. So I called mcafee...and got some recording saying I need to pay per minute in order to get help( Iwasnt gonna pay for that)...
DELL called me back a day later..saying that I should reformat my computer ..and that it was my only option (they still didnt know what was wrong)....I reformated the computer...hrs later my service came back..after one week of hell.
...ask 'em "what will it accomplish?"
by randolphaknight - 8/3/07 7:56 PM In reply to: How many times have you resorted to reformatting... by mztweetaI have had several Dell's and maintain my families hp's and Toshibas...at least 10 times have been advised to reformat the hard drive by customer "service". Worst offender is Dell. Once I was dumb enough to do it. Took all day to reinstall and didn't fix the problem. When I threatened to bill them for my wasted time with copy to my attorney they finally sent out a tech to replace the defective motherboard...which is what I suggested was the problem in the fist place. If tech support ever suggests reformatting your hard drive ask them for a detailed explanation of what they expect that to accomplish...other than to keep you busy and out of their hair for a long time...When what you hear back from them amounts to a long pause or a big "duh", hang up or log off and get another rep who will actually listen to you and knows what the problem/solution is. Bottom line, unless a virus has eaten up a good bit of your data, there is little good that reformatting will do.
Possibly your TCP/IP stack
by daleisfflchamp - 8/4/07 4:43 AM In reply to: How many times have you resorted to reformatting... by mztweetaAccording to you:
1. You're missing your Internet connection
2. It doesn't seem to be virus that caused 1
3. Reinstalling restore Internet Connection
4. Possibly not Hardware (Modem) problem
My guess is it's a corrupted TCP/IP stack. It is possible that your antivirus might done a scan, removed a virus that is meddling with TCP/IP, but didn't repair the TCP/IP stack. Most trained techies wouldn't know about this, as they're trained to answer from the lists of common problems they have. Some programs exist to rebuild the TCP/IP stack. We can't know whether TCP/IP is the culprit though, since your problem has been solved.
Only once
by geofgibson - 8/3/07 7:44 PM In reply to: Poll: How many times have you resorted to reformatting... by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
The only time that I had to reformat the drive was the time I was trying to repartition the D drive and selected the C drive by mistake. Once I got over the horror of repartitioning the C drive, there wasn't much choice.
In how many years?
by mwooge - 8/3/07 7:46 PM In reply to: Poll: How many times have you resorted to reformatting... by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I've had to start over 2-3 times, but that's in 10+ years. (Actually 20, but the first computers didn't boot from an HD.)
I've actually lost count lol
by Bullseyestrat - 8/3/07 7:49 PM In reply to: Poll: How many times have you resorted to reformatting... by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I've reformatted dozens of times on many computers for various reasons. It all stems back to the old Pentium/486 computers I got for free from my school electronics shop 6+ years ago. Alot of times I would be running Windows 98 first edition, and I would get the blue screen from some error. Rather than finding the problem, I would format the hard drive. I basically did that with the 98 until I started using 2000 Pro. Then I started getting viruses upon viruses from various websites and Kazaa. Virus removing programs can do only so much. I'm pretty careful with all that stuff, but when my brothers using the house computer with no security program, they let in alot of random stuff. I would try to find any virus or adware, but most of the time I wouldn't be able to get rid of all of it. So I would have to nuke the drive lol. I really haven't had that problem much lately though seeing how I started using Norton Internet Security.
The only times I've done it lately were for my older computers, and from RAID problems with my SATA drives. I wasn't really too familiar with the RAID settings, but when I would set them up and erase them, it would screw up the primary hard drive. Not really sure why, but I know I'm never going to screw with any RAID arrays or whatever for now on lol. But in all, I've done it atleast 20+ times on alot of computers.
Once in 23 years using Mac
by FrankWoolf - 8/3/07 7:55 PM In reply to: Poll: How many times have you resorted to reformatting... by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I only use Mac computers and have been using them professionally and at home for 23 years. The only time I decided to do a disk reformat was when I foolishly switched off a Mac while it was installing a new system. I could have just restarted the installation but I decided it was a good time to start fresh. All my software and data was backed up on an external disk so it was easy to just copy it all back to the new system.
How many times have you encountered a computer problem where
by daved82140 - 8/3/07 8:07 PM In reply to: Poll: How many times have you resorted to reformatting... by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I have a new Dell XPS that is only 3 weeks old. I was down loading a soft wear to burn DVDs off a reccomended site and my system froze up. I got an error message that there was an Eole System error. It said the RPC server had a problem and there was Main Thread ($168)00569c 58 ww Disp exe. Try as I might I could not access any of the system tools.. I finaly got to where I could uninstall the downloaded softwear. The message also said I had a problem with Window Washer which took me a while to uninstall but I finally got it but I still couldn't acces the start menu or any sysytem tools. I tried hard booting it several times to no avail. I gave up and went to bed thinking I was going to call Dell in the morning.. I couldn't sleep so I got up and turned it on and low and behold I had a start menu. I quickly went to system restore backed it up a week and did a full restore.. It worked like a charm... I am now back in business. Luckly I have an external hard drive so I didn't lose a thing. I have had to do a system restore on my old computer but it was mainly due to not catching a virus but I have never had the problem I just experienced.
WINDOWS INSTALLATION BLUE SCREEN
by Urantiason - 8/3/07 8:18 PM In reply to: Poll: How many times have you resorted to reformatting... by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
While in the process of installing Windows on a new build, I had several drives blue screen. When that happens, I immediately wipe/reformat the hard-drive and restart the installation. My experience has been that a stable install usually goes onto a clean drive. Plus, Wipe Drive will not work on a disk that has serious errors--I have few tech tools and troubleshoot the old-fashioned way, one component at a time.
too many times to count
by kre8ive - 8/3/07 10:23 PM In reply to: Poll: How many times have you resorted to reformatting... by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
i con'trecall the countless times i have reformatted. everytime its because one of my family members downloaded something, or i changed something i wasn't supposed to. moreso the latter :P
7-8 times. Don't laugh
by kevintracy - 8/3/07 10:57 PM In reply to: Poll: How many times have you resorted to reformatting... by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
One system. I had an old HP Laptop. Whenever I had a virus, malware, a trojan horse, or things just weren't working right in general, I would delete random registry keys in the registry editor.
While I usually succeeded in crippling the virus, I also succeeded in crippling my computer.
Though deleting registry keys is exhilarating (like gambling), I wouldn't recommend it unless you REALLY know what you're doing.
-Kevin
www.ktracy.com
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