Computer Crashed Need help.

[MountainDrew023]

Last Night out of the blue, my computer froze in AOL. The mouse stops working, so I decide to restart and in the mean time use the other computer(The old one I'm using now) However, Now I find that Windows has crashed on the good computer.

I need to know how to fix it. It is a Dell 8100 and I would like to know how to open a DOS prompt. When messing with it before I got one, but I can't remeber how. Then I need to find out how to backup my C drive using only DOS.

Can anyone help?

Thanks

-MD

[Beldaran]

Originally posted by MountainDrew023
Last Night out of the blue, my computer froze in AOL.


Surprise, suprise.;)



Originally posted by MountainDrew023
Now I find that Windows has crashed on the good computer.

I need to know how to fix it. It is a Dell 8100 and I would like to know how to open a DOS prompt. When messing with it before I got one, but I can't remeber how. Then I need to find out how to backup my C drive using only DOS.

Can anyone help?

Thanks

-MD

Ok, there is no way to backup your drive using only DOS, unless your hardrive is small enough to fit on a 1.4mb floppy.:laughing:

What version of windows are you using?

It sounds to me like simply restarting your computer should do the job. Windows crashes all the time.

If in fact windows is totally lunched, then you have bigger problems. You will need to re-install windows. This is done by rebooting the machine with a windows start disc or CD-ROM (depending on the version of windows) inserted. Follow the simple steps to reinstallation.

I hope that helps a bit. I'd still like to know more about what's going on, like the version of windows and the specific type of error messages.

[Flash Man]

One nice way that fixes most computer problems is a rebuild of your Operating System, although assuming Dell has a restore disk that wouldn't work too well. If you do however have a CD for your operating system then just stick it in and restart unless you have 98se or below, those didn't boot from cds. If you do have those then get a floppy disk that you can use and then goto My Computer and right click on the floppy drive and goto Format. Then check copy system files and then format it.

Afterwards look for MSCDEX.exe and OAKCDROM.sys and copy those to the floppy and you will have to edit the autoexec.bat and config.sys to be able to load those files so you can load up your cd in dos. Add this line to the config.sys file on the floppy:
DEVICE=a:\OAKCDROM.sys /D:CDROM001
and this line to autoexec.bat:
a:\MSCDEX.EXE /D:CDROM001
After that stick in the floppy and then restart. When it comes up to the dos prompt stick in your Operating System CD and then type d:
Then most likely setup.exe.
Then just follow on screen instructions and it should rebuild your OS, but make sure you save system files while rebuilding.
Again thats only if you have an OS CD, not a Restore CD. Restore CDs you can boot to, but generally if you do it will format your hard drive.

If you are running Windows 98SE or lower then you should be able to restart into DOS by going start/shut down then selecting it. Otherwise you'll have to do the above.

You can back up your hard drive in many ways. Most common would be to burn everything you want onto CDs, although not everyone has CD Burners especially if you have an older computer and never bought one.

If in the case you don't have one and have multiple computers and you have a network(or at least network cards) you could buy a crossover cable and hook them up and copy all the data over there. You may be able to do this with other types of cables, I do believe serial cables but i'm not totally sure.

Another way you could is if you have a zip drive then you could back up most things onto them. But of course if you don't have any of those things above then you would need to back things up on floppies, and if you don't have a floppy drive you're screwed unless you're willing to go buy some stuff. As Beldaran said you don't have much space on floppies and would be quite hard to copy things to them.

[slayer6896]

flash mans post should work but i dont think it was windows fault that it crashed i have had a few dells in the past and i regret ever having them because they always crashed no matter what os i used or my mother board got fried some how.

[MountainDrew023]

Well, I can get to the DOS prompt, and get it to read a CD, but it won't transfer. Any ideas? It always says insufficent space even when theres a gigabyte of free space fir a 670MB folder.

The restore disk does not work, and restarting doesn't work.

If I re-install windows it'll fix it but delete files. So I'm making it a last resort.

Basically I need to back up 5 folders of important files. I have 3 750MB CDs and 15 1MB floppys.

Ideas?

Remember I can't touch windows. It's completely dead. I can only get to my C drive through DOS

More Info:
It's a Dell 8100 with Windows ME. Safe and normal modes don't work for Windows is dead. Only thing I can get to is DOS. This was most likely caused by a virus, for my firewall stopped responding.

Thanks

-MD

[Flash Man]

1 gigabyte is 1073741824 bytes, or approx 1000 megabytes. You need more space on your hard drive. If you have all the files backed up format your drive and then install it. To do that type at the DOS Prompt
format c:

[MountainDrew023]

No, I'm only backing up the 5 important folders of My Documents, Zelda Classic, Open Zelda, Writings, and Video Games.

Those don't even add up to a gigabyte let alone 2. (Got more CDs)

-MD

[vegeta1215]

So your computer crashed and you can't even boot into Windows? Ouch, thats awful. That happened to me once two years ago. My PC froze during a defrag, and I rebooted only to find that it was in the process of moving some important system files. In short, I couldn't get on Windows, and only had DOS. I did what I could to copy my school papers, ZC saves and other files onto floppies, but I lost all my media :(

Dell has pretty good phone support. That would have been the first thing I would do if I were in your situation and didn't know what to do.

[Ich]

See? This is what happens when you use windows. I bet they programmed it in to stop working when you can't find a tech support man anywhere, except at home with their families.

[Thunderbird]

Originally posted by MountainDrew023
Well, I can get to the DOS prompt, and get it to read a CD, but it won't transfer. Any ideas? It always says insufficent space even when theres a gigabyte of free space fir a 670MB folder.

The restore disk does not work, and restarting doesn't work.

If I re-install windows it'll fix it but delete files. So I'm making it a last resort.

Basically I need to back up 5 folders of important files. I have 3 750MB CDs and 15 1MB floppys.
-MD

You should not lose too much by reinstalling Windows.

One note: Unless you have a CD burning DOS program, consider your CDs a worthless method right now. If you use one of the UDF CD programs, you are toast. If you can, transfer that hard drive to another computer (as a secondary disk) and get the files off of it that way.

[gdorf]

..Why don't you just reinstall windows.. without backing up your stuff. All your folders will still be there when you reinstall, whats the big deal?