IT crisis- please help!

Claire Dodin · Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2008, 01:46 (GMT) Post subject: IT crisis- please help!

Hi!

I've not had a good 24 hours. Here are my 2 major issues:

I plugged in a new usb hardrive to use for recording, and it crashed my desktop with a fatal error that cause my registry to be corrupted. I had to reinstall windows xp pro. I've lost all my files. Crying or Very sad

And now my desktop is slow, so slow I can't record, it stutters. I've got 2giga ram, intel pentium 4 and it worked perfectly before the hard drive disaster . I've got nearly no software running as I've just reinstalled windows, I can't possibly have caught a virus already, and I've downloaded all the updates. If you have any idea what I could do, please share.

So I plugg in my Mbox onto my laptop and I get a bad buzz and nearly no level. I turn the volume button up and realize it goes all the way round, not changing the level, and so do all the other buttons! twigging any button makes the buzz worse. I think my just one year old Mbox has died! Ahrrr!!
I've finally managed to plug my mic through a preamp, then through the second Mbox line (not phantom one) and although there's still a buzz I could record more or less ok.

So I need to buy a new portable 48v preamp/sound card. Anyone can recommend a good one that won't break straight away and that doesn't cost too much as it looks like I need a new PC too (although it's also just a year old)

computer devices don't like me!
Crying or Very sad

Ed Gambill · Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2008, 06:01 (GMT) Post subject:

Clair

When you reinstalled your operating system did you format your hard drive. If you did not then there is/are products that can help retrive you lost data.

I have use this program to recover data that I had deleated.

http://www.migosoftware.com/store/recoverlostdata.html

David Oxford · Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2008, 07:57 (GMT) Post subject:

Claire:

So sorry to hear about your bad luck!!! Computers may not like you - but WE do! We'll keep our fingers crossed that you're able to get the situation rectified soon!!

Regarding your need for a portable, inexpensive mic-pre, there are many out there. I don't know if you're looking for JUST a preamp or if you're looking for a USB interface with phantom power....but I've included some links for you below that have a little of everything.

Keep us posted on how things work out - good luck!

http://www.musiciansfriend.com

http://www.bswusa.com/main.asp

http://www.guitarcenter.com

Thomas C. Gass · Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2008, 09:08 (GMT) Post subject:

Claire,

to find out why your system is so slow, do the following:

1 press ctrl-alt-delete
2 The "windows task manager" will pop up
3 Selecte the tab "processes"
4 Click on the "CPU...%" title bar so that the process using up your cpu power is listed on top (showing a high %)

Let me know what process this is and then let's see...

Thomas

Claire Dodin · Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2008, 11:58 (GMT) Post subject:

Thanks guys.

Ed: I did reformat the drive. It was so damaged that I wanted to have a clean start to avoid problems. But I will keep this link, it could be useful in the future.

David: thanks for the links. I need the phantom power so I can make it work on my laptop. If got what I need that isn't portable, now I just want the portable equivalent, but I'm not sure I want to buy an Mbox again. It's quite expensive for something that breaks in a year.
I was wondering if you had had a good experience with an Maudio or something else. I think I saw Jacob say that the Mbox wasn't the best choice on another thread, I just wonder what is.

Thomas: my CPU is going between 60% and 95%. It's not a good sign, is it? And what is using 99% of the CPU is "system Idle Process",
weinen

It's a self assembled PC, so I can change only one piece if I need to. (lets hope not because I would really know how)

Thomas C. Gass · Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2008, 13:19 (GMT) Post subject:

Claire Dodin · Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2008, 13:31 (GMT) Post subject:

it must have been downloading updates because now the usage is 2%.
It seems to be slightly faster (even though it still took 2 minutes to open adobe audition). I'm going to do some tests recordings and keep looking for any updates I can download.
Hopefully it will sort itself out.

Ed Gambill · Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2008, 13:53 (GMT) Post subject:

Edirol UA-25. Its good, its stable, it’s not the cheapest or the most expensive, it’s built like a tank, its small enough to be portable. I’ve had mine for about three years now.

For some reason I thing that anything Digi Design does not play well with others.

Claire Dodin · Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2008, 14:05 (GMT) Post subject:

woah, Ed, that sounds great and it's half the price of the Mbox! Very Happy

By the way, this recovery software, do you think it would work on badly burnt DVDs? Because I burnt all my files on DVDs before reinstalling windows, but when I try to read them on any computer, it sees the files and names of the files but can't open then, or copy them, or save them etc... They are there, I just can't access them.

Chris Clementson · **Voice Seeker** Joined: 14 Jan 2008 Posts: 216

Claire -

When you get your computer up and running again, consider getting Partition Magic and creating a second hard drive partition. You will store all of your voice files, data files, pictures, etc. in that partition. Should you have to wipe your OS partition again you will still have your files.

Also get a second hard drive and Norton Ghost to make periodic backups.

Frank Cabanski · Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2008, 23:18 (GMT) Post subject:

Hopefully a lesson was learned. Back up all data on a regular basis. If you get into that habit, a crash isn't so bad.

If you ghost the whole drive, or maintain a duplicate backup drive that includes all applications, then a crash is no trouble at all.

Kimberley Byrd · Posted: Sun Feb 24, 2008, 18:59 (GMT) Post subject:

Claire,

Sorry to hear about your misfortune. I work in IT for a university in Philadelphia and we frequently run into this problem w/faculty's home machines. We always recommend purchasing an external hard drive for backing up data. Can't stress enough the importance of backing up your data. Having an extrnal hard drive gives you extra security should you experience another hard drive crash.

Good luck.

Kim

Claire Dodin · Posted: Sun Feb 24, 2008, 20:14 (GMT) Post subject:

Thanks Kim and Frank,
But the reason why I am in this situation is because I plugged in an external hard drive to save my files. This is what crashed and damaged my system in the first place.
I'm over losing the data now, I just want this PC to work again and it doesn't. I think I'll have to reinstall windows again and have a little prayer. I will this time make 2 partitions to save data on one of them. I know how to make the partitions but I'm not sure how to save from one to the other, but I'll work it out, it seems it's the only solution with an online server as even my DVDs failed as back-up.

Chris Clementson · **Voice Seeker** Joined: 14 Jan 2008 Posts: 216

The second partition will show up as the D: drive, so you save everything to, for example, D:\mydirectory\mywavfile.wav.

Thomas C. Gass · Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008, 12:15 (GMT) Post subject:

Claire

having a good backup strategy is really a good thing... I've had twice a desaster without appropriate backups (once on my Mac, then on my PC) that made me think about how to avoid such a situation.

Partitioning your drive is a good idea, because you will end up with one partition for your system and a second for your data. If you do not change things frequently on your system partition (installing new software, updates aso.) you can live a long time with your backup. On the data side it is essential to do regular backups. Nevertheless keep in mind that you can have two different reasons for data loss: either your harddisk data get's "scrambled" or your drive's hardware fails. In the second case you will definitely loose all your data on both partitions.

I strongly recommend to store your production data on an external disc and make your backups (system and data) on a SECOND external disc. Since my office PC is running 24h a day, I do automated backups during night time with the following strategy: 1 full backup followed by 6 differential backups. On the Macintosh I have a raid system for the OS disk and manually backup my production data on DVD with Retrospect. When making backups on DVD it is essential that you CHECK the data written on DVD.

For the PC I use Acronis software - a real good and not too expensive investment.

Cheers,

Thomas