computer guru question

[sealie]

There are a couple of questions at the end of this narrative. But my nature is to tell stories. Ask anyone who has met me.

So this morning my primary computer died. Dell latitude D830

Last night it was working fine(ish --it's been a wee bit buggy for a while), but Norton said there possibly suspicious activity was happening and recommended using Norton Power Eraser. I ran it and it found nothing. And everything seemed to be okay. I ran malwarebytes and it found nothing.

This morning windows refused to load, and nothing worked I couldn’t run it in safe mode or return it to a previous working configuration. Just cycled to a blue screen of death for a millisecond (too short to read), tried to load windows, blue screen of flashing death, and took me back to a DOS screen telling me windows wouldn’t load…. Round and round the garden like a teddy bear.

It’s an old computer. I got it in early 2008. And it was running windows XP because I figured it couldn’t handle Windows 8. Yes, I know, but Windows 8 would have cacked it.

But was a virus responsible? Age? Software issue? Is the hard drive all right? Taking it to a specialist is very expensive. So I googled a lot and, subsequently, learnt 1) how to remove a laptop hard drive, 2) you can hook up a hard drive to another laptop -- don’t laugh!learning experience, and 3) SATA/IDE to USB connection via a lot of cables.

So I took myself off to PC World and with the help of a very nice assistant bought a self-contained enclosure which I could put my hard drive in, rather than a bunch of cables.

Long story short. My secondary computer did not recognise the hard drive. It told me that a parameter is missing on one attempt, and two other attempts it simply did not recognise the device.

My three incredibly naïve questions are:
1) Is the hard drive likely to be dead?
2) I now have a shell of a laptop, and apparently, you can buy laptop hard drives and they’re really easy to install! I know, I know – learning experience. So can I buy a new hard drive and install an operating system and use it?
3) Do you think that linux would be a good choice?

Comments

[nic]

1) Maybe, maybe not. Try hooking it up to various friends' computers - look for one that was old/running Win XP.

2) Probably no. New hard drives would suffer incompatibilities; your old laptop would not have enough memory to run a new version of Windows. Also you run the risk of more components dying.

3) Linux is great but requires quite a lot of technical experience/know-how to set it up. Up to you!

Hope this helps.

[jimandblair.livejournal.com]

hooking it up to another computer is a good idea! I wil give that a go.

pity, I thought Heh, plug in a new hard drive....

[ratcreature]

I use linux and I'd take it over windows any time (the first thing I did on my new laptop was to get rid of the windows, and even that caused trouble, because I had to backup it so I could have it for restoring in case I needed it for the warranty), but a modern standard linux installation that is graphical and easy to use out of the box (i.e. you don't need to know all the technical stuff for a standard setup), like say Ubuntu, is not much happier with old hardware than Windows is.

I mean, it will run on old hardware, and you could pick a less resource hogging distribution, and tweak it, but I'm not sure a new hard drive is worth it for a laptop from 2008, where sooner rather than later the other parts will fail too. On my desktop which is really old, I run an ubuntu variant that has less hardware demands, but it is not much fun to use that computer.

[jimandblair.livejournal.com]

i hear good things about linux -- lower virus vulnerability, as you say less hogging.... I just kind of like the idea of exploring it.

[ratcreature]

I've been using linux since the 90s and never had a single malware problem. There are security vulnerabilities of course that can be targeted, and I keep my system updated, but in my experience you don't have this problem where you click on an ad accidentally because the free filesharing site tries to trick you into clicking that instead of download and end up with a computer bombardinmg you with porn ads or such. And really, unless you run into hardware support issues, it is not more difficult to run than any other OS. For the 15 min I had to endure Windows 8 I was much more confused because basic options (like doing a harddisk backup, which was what I wanted) were completely hidden, and it constantly wanted me to register for stuff.

[iibnf.livejournal.com]

If it was the hard drive, it would give you messages like that. It sounds like Nortons has deleted a file it shouldn't. If you have the old original Windows XP disks, try reinstalling it? But if you have files on there that you want to recover, maybe consider having it done professionally by a file recovery service.

[jimandblair.livejournal.com]

that's a good idea. I'm going to give that a try before I source another XP machine. I have an old XP disc.

[springwoof.livejournal.com]

::makes a sad face::
No words of tech advice, but sorry for your computer loss!

[jimandblair.livejournal.com]

i honestly don't feel that soemthing which is seven years old should cack out on me. *grumbles*

[lodondria.livejournal.com]

horrifyingly, our machines only last about 5 years before *something* breaks enough to need replacing. Or there's the I need a new video card so let's buy a new computer argument.

[lodondria.livejournal.com]

I'll reiterate Jedinic's advice re hooking the old drive to a computer running winXp and binning the old lappie.

Check out Linux Mint for a user compatible operating system.

What ever you do next, get rid of Norton. That's pretty much worse than the actual malware you might pick up. I've used Malwarebytes and Spybot in combination for years now on the family's machines and haven't had any issues.

[jimandblair.livejournal.com]

i researched and picked the Norton product becuase it got good reviews.

[lodondria.livejournal.com]

At the time, that may have been. Right now, it's not a good thing.

[jimandblair.livejournal.com]

can you direct me to the information, please.

[lodondria.livejournal.com]

I apologize. I managed to conflate Norton with McAfee. There's nothing wrong with Norton, it's McAfee that's a problem.

[jimandblair.livejournal.com]

*phew* I wouldn't touch McAfee with a bargepole. After reading your email, I googled and moseyed around a few forums and I couldn't find anything relating to Norton going bad recently. I know it isn't perfect, which i why I double-check with malwarebytes.

Thank you for getting back to me.