Monday, December 31, 2007

My computer crashes when it goes to sleep- or I hate Vista

I so hate Microsoft. You would think that such an august company worth billions of dollars whose main product is to build a computer operating system could in fact produce a computer operating system that works properly on at least a range of good standard machines.

Three months ago I saved up and bought a top of the range computer - the Asus VX2S Lamborghini. (Well, I didn't exactly save up- the share market went up and I sold some shares and made some money) Great parts. Great system. What else can go wrong?

Now my precious notebook has crashed and it seems the only way to get it running back up again is to use the Rescue Disk which will also wipe out all the data off my C partition which contains my folder and photos.

It was really a bad day. A very hot day. First my desktop crashed due to a memory error. Then my internet connection on the desktop went buggy. My friend Andrew came over and helped fixed both problems. Then at midnight - the Lamborghini notebook crashes. WTF???

The notebook had been having a problem for awhile already. Whenever it went to sleep- it would not wake up. The monitor screen stayed asleep. The keyboard didn't seem to work- well it may have but hey, I couldn't see bugger all. To get out of it- I had to switch off and restart.

The way around it was to disable screen saver and the power saving options. Note: Upgrading the Nvidia graphics card drivers didn't help either.

But around Christmas, I think I reenabled the screen saver. Again the same problem. The only way around it was to power it off.

Last night- I came back after doing some shopping and same problem- the stupid computer was dead asleep again and wouldn't wake up. I powerered it off and then restarted. This time however I received this error message.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Windows Error Recovery
Windows failed to start. A hardware or software change might be the cause.
If Windows files have been damaged, Startup Repair can help diagnose and fix the problem. (Use the arrow keys to highlight your choice.)

    Launch Startup Repair (recommended)
    Start Windows Normally
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Both options didn't work and lead back to the same Windows Error Recovery page.

I tried booting in safemode but have the same result.

My only option it now seems is to use the Asustek Recovery Disk- but that will wipe out the C partition where I stored my recent Christmas photos and emails which I am anxious to keep.

System Restore was (unfortunately) disabled on my computer. My fault. And that could have contributed to the problem.

But this whole thing is really ridiculous. How can a top of the range system break down so bloody easily. Its like a car manufacturer like Rolls Royce, BMW, or Lamborghini making a car that stalled the minute you hit the brakes - and having the audacity to boast that we have made an improvement over the previous model.

There was no choice- neither was I given a disk by bloody Asus that could easily repair the damage without data loss. I paid over $5000 for the damn computer- you would think they could cough up a 50 cent installation DVD.

Thank God I have friends who are computer savvy. One of them recommended that I borrow his Vista installation disk and use it to attempt a repair. (His disk was for Home- mine was for Ultimate- but it didn't matter).

I didn't know what to do- so I googled it. And came up with this solution

http://vistaultimate.windowsreinstall.com/repairstartup/repairstartup.htm

The first time it went back to the same repair page. 2nd time went thru the repair process. And the third attempt brought me to the wonderful Windows Startup Screen.

What a relief.



3 comments:

Althea Wong said...

wah... lamborghini! i was so eyeing that! only the vista put me off.

Kelvin Kwa said...

I don't touch Vista. Not till a few Service Packs later.

Yauming YMC said...

Couldn't help it Kel. It came preinstalled with the Asus computer but they did not provide an installation disk.