Last Updated on December 3, 2019 by Christopher G Mendla
I was out to a client I hadn’t heard from for about 2 years or so. Their laptop had been dying over the last couple of months. The screen would go white among other things. Finally it wouldn’t boot and they called.
I tried doing a registry restore, but the Sam File was locked up as being corrupted. So, I went to the next step and loaded BartPE and started moving files over to a Mybook drive. OK. the only problem is that it periodically goes into a white screen which locks the machine up so you have to figure out what actually transferred and restart th copying process.
I doubt that a repair install will work because of the possibility of the machine dying midway through the install. That would leave things worse than they are.
I’m going to finish the backups and then try one of the Linux boot Cds. If it will recognize the C drive then they will at least have internet access and, with open office, the ability to edit some of their documents (some are in the horrid docx format)
If that doesn’t work, they at least have a copy of most of their data.
Another client had a massive flood in their office from a burst pipe. Unfortunately their laptop was on the floor and got trashed. Again, the backups were not up to speed.