Korean Job Discussion Forums

[sarbonn]

I just got my home computer sent to me in Korea. Of course, I tried to set it up, and the first thing that happened is a Disk boot failure, prompting me to insert my system disk to continue. Of course, NONE of my software is here with me, and no amount of attempts to get the person holding my stuff to actually send it have been successful (my god, she's like talking to a freaking wall sometimes...she sent me all of my "free trial" game software that comes from those PC gaming magazines, but NONE of the software I keep asking for over and over again...but that's another story). What do I do here? I'm really isolated here from having any contact with anything or anyone that would make this go so much easier. I've been waiting for my computer for almost three months now, and it was almost like pulling teeth to finally get her to send it.

Do I go buy another copy of Windows XP? Buy another hard drive and install Windows on that? What are my options with this? I'm not completely computer illiterate, but I"m not completely up to speed on most of it either these days. I have no intentions of buying a brand new computer when for the most part, this is a very good computer already, if I can just get the basic part of it going. I'd also hate to lose a lot of significant files on the hard drive, but I'm already resigning to the fact that that just may happen (the only one of any real concern is a configured shopping cart I use for a company whose site I manage...configuring that thing is a nightmare every time I have had to put it onto another computer as it is impossible to just cut and paste the files over because the company who designed it was smoking crack when they invented that thing).

So what are my viable options here, aside from the usual Dave's "humor" that just wastes time and space?

[Gaber]

you could try torrenting a copy of XP at a PC bang and then burning it onto a disk. Utorrent is unobtrusive enough to install on a PC bang computer.

[OneWayTraffic]

The very first thing you do is open your case and check all of the plugs. It's very likely one of the cables got knocked loose in transit.

You can see if your hard drive is detected in the BIOS as well.

[sarbonn]

Yeah, it's definitely a problem with the hard drive. It's a SATA drive, and I'm having a really hard time figuring out what's wrong. I checked all the wiring, and to be honest, I can't tell if there's anything wrong with it. It's definitely not recognizing the hard drive at all. I get the impression something knocked loose, but hell if I can tell what did.

[OneWayTraffic]

Put the HDD into another computer. That should give you a pretty good feedback into what's wrong. Try plugging the HDD into all the other m/b slots as well.

Best guess is that it got bumped and some data got corrupted. If so, you'll need a new drive and a version of XP/Vista to put on it.

[Chris_Dixon]

to be honest, id take it into a computer place to get looked at....they're so cheap, that if you don know what your doing its prob for the best

[sarbonn]

I figure I'm going to just bring it into Techno Mart next week. I really wanted it up and running yesterday and am so peeved about this. I really hate to lose all my data (two things are important that I can't salvage: One being a shopping cart configured for a company back in the states...have data copied, but configuring that software has to be specifically done on each computer and it's a freaking nightmare to do, and two being all of my music that was on the computer...I have such a hard time getting the person back in the states to send ANYTHING over here that it may be decades before I see any of my actual music from back home, meaning I have to keep buying the same stuff over and over again when I can find it).