It's going to be one of those days
 

GEEK %$%$%$%$

:doh:

If it don't boot how do I figure out if it was XP or 2000? I don't remember...

So I drive home and get my disks. Figure out it's XP by who I got it from...put the disk in and reboot, select R for repair, it asked which OS I wanted to log onto...1 option and I hit that...it goes and asks for the admin password...I tried 3 it could have been that I know of...and it locked me out to a fresh reboot...and this time it boots fine to the OS on the disk. UGH. Very strange. Machine was shut down properly yesterday and has been working fine. Clues to what may cause this?

Anyone know how to find out an admin password like that so if this happens again I can repair this? If there even is a way?

Booted fine, walked back to it and it's locked up hard. Reboot and back to same screen again.

can you get into the bios....?

on any pc you usually have to make yourself the Admin.

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=330181

I took it all apart just now and blew 7 lbs of sawdust out of it (not really but there was a bit) and touched/reset every pluggable thing and it works now.

NOW I'm nervous.

I got all those errors in there when I tried to load the windows repair until I blew it out then touched everything. UGH

Password was default nothing which is what I hadn't tried since I don't use passwords on this stuff because it's all behind a firewall.

that's happened to me before.....

you need an external hard drive so you can copy everything
off that box and then re install a clean copy
if ya feel like it....

yea it's a small box so i'm not sure if it will even do a second drive but I got to do something else for backup. All the files are on other machines so I'm not lost but it would be a pain in the rump to replace the machine because of the setups/speeds etc.

What about an external hard drive like for a laptop,,, I have a toshiba that is 320gig that I got for about $120 ,, I think amazon has them now,,, They run through a USB port,no power cord, might make transferring data easier if you ever lost something.

Scott - was that the one I built for you a couple years ago? You work in a tough environment with the wood and dust. Consider putting some filter material around the possible air intakes of the shop computers and plan to periodically blow them out...

You need a bit of a "technology plan". You have enough assorted computing items that you need to catalog what you have, where you are susceptible to failure, and what you are willing to loose and what you are not willing to loose. Then have a lightweight but reasonable disaster prevention and disaster recovery plan. Doesn't need to be highly involved, just lightweight and well laid out...

John that's one I got from Adam in the classifieds, it's an hp 700 something meg machine with minimal memory etc.

Agreed on the tech plan. My ins agent was in the shop yesterday and we did a rough tally of equipment. Lets put it this way...I'm waaaaaaaaay underinsured even where I thought I should be so we're writing a new policy.

I will add a disaster plan to the list of stuff to do. lol it's more fun when you got pressure though :hee:

Machine has been fine all morning now go figure. I've purposely rebooted it 3-4 times too.

This machine doesn't have a filter on it and I think I'm going to add one tomorrow. I did put a filter on one of the others and it definitely seems to help. Hard part is figuring out how to cover all the holes in the cabinets. I really should mount these inside something else with controlled holes and removeable filters.

sawdust bad
hepa enclosure with positive pressure good.

yea Bill I'm seriously thinking about having some cabinets bent up and make some removeable/cleanable filters with positive pressure fans in them. This is not the first time I've had problems though and sure it won't be the last. Stuff just gets everywhere. Seems to be ok still. I bet the geek fluid was low.

that fluid soaks into the dust and crap getting into the cases, you need to be more careful, the geek oil is getting more expensive by the day.