E bay madness!!! HELP!!

[Northy]

No, same error

[Southwell]

If you can get hold a cd you can do a repair.

[Northy]

Not sure Mr. IT man will let me have a cd

[Medders]

This happened to my pc a while back and I didn't have the disk. Think I download a bootfile from the net on my laptop and burned a disk that way, which allowed me to boot the pc and fix it properly.

[Southwell]

Originally Posted by Northy

Not sure Mr. IT man will let me have a cd

What make it is? What version home or business? You dont need the cd key to repair a windows install i don't think?

[Northy]

HP laptop
XP pro

G

[Southwell]

Ask your IT department if they are willing to help. Any decent people will at least have a quick look.

[Northy]

But he'll shout at me because I caused it

[Southwell]

Tell him the computer crashed and wouldn't reboot afterwards

[Medders]

Erm, as I said earlier, if you have another working pc in the house you can download boot file fix from the net, burn it to a disk, put that into the laptop and it should boot. However, if you don't have administrator rights on the pc you have no choice but to swallow the pride and talk to IT

[Northy]

Medders, where do I download it from?

G

[Medders]

I think it was from microsofts website. Do a google search on xp boot disk.

From memory it worked enough to get me into safe mode, and I think enable me to go to a system restore point.

[Southwell]

Yes but if it's a business computer you do not want to be playing around like that, it will only annoy IT more if it gets even more corrupted.

[Northy]

so what's the best plan?

G

[Southwell]

Go to IT, say it crashed and now wont boot, play dumb. If you arn't in there every two mins they wont mind, it's the persistent idiots we hate.

[Medders]

He's probably right, although using a boot disk and just trying a system restore shouldn't make it any worse.

I think your IT man may be due a few pints

[Rich D]

Originally Posted by Medders

You should always have an independant firewall on each PC

If you can be bothered to read it all mate - its all here

http://www.grc.com/sn/sn-003.pdf


Essentially, it says noobs are recommended to install software firewall aswell as using a NAT router, if you are confident with what you are doing then you neednt bother

Hope you get sorted Northy

[Medders]

Agreed that if your network is properly secured then you needn't worry.

What scared the shite out of me the other week was the Mrs merryily using her laptop not realising it was connected to ANOTHER wireless network. Vista had kindly overridden the wireless settings and was defaulting to this other "open" network rather than my password protected one which selected as preferred. Cos the machine was set to connect to wireless automatically she didn't even notice.

Better to be safe than sorry, and that is having at least a basic firewall on every machine

[Northy]

Originally Posted by Medders

I think it was from microsofts website. Do a google search on xp boot disk.

From memory it worked enough to get me into safe mode, and I think enable me to go to a system restore point.

Can't find it, only a boot floppy (and there is no floppy drive)

[Alfonzo]

And amidst the all this computer agony - is using the Windows Defender a good idea?