Personal Development for Smart People Forums

Personal Development for Smart PeopleTM Forums


Go Back   Personal Development for Smart People Forums > Personal Development > Technology & Technical Skills
Register FAQ Members List Calendar Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read

Technology & Technical Skills Computer skills, hardware, software, internet topics, gadgets, programming


Welcome to the Personal Development for Smart People Forums, the place for lively, intelligent discussion of all personal growth issues -- physical, mental, financial, social, emotional, spiritual, and more.

You're currently viewing as a guest, which gives you limited read-only access. By joining our free community, you'll be able to post your own messages, access many members-only features, see the new messages posted since your last visit, and of course remove this header message. Registration is fast, simple, and free, so please join today.

If you arrived here from a search engine, you may want to explore the main site first, which includes hundreds of deep and insightful articles on a variety of personal development topics.

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #1 (permalink)  
Old 11-02-2007, 12:47 AM
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Kansas City, MO
Posts: 741
Lil Chris is on a distinguished road
Default Windows booting question

I have a question...
My friend has a laptop that he says the hard drive is absolutely full, so full in fact the computer won't even boot up... Now, I haven't seen it yet or what it's doing... but is there a way to remedy this situation...?

I told him i thought he could use his thumb drive to let the system temporarily boot (it's 2 gigs), but I don't know exactly how to do this...?

Does anybody have any suggestions...?
__________________
(mt) Professional Grade Hosting -
Digg this Post!Add Post to del.icio.usBookmark Post in TechnoratiFurl this Post!
Reply With Quote
  #2 (permalink)  
Old 11-02-2007, 02:39 AM
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Vegas Baby!
Posts: 121
ixmatus is on a distinguished road
Default

"So full it won't boot up..." sounds pretty silly to me, but, if that is indeed the case I would simply recommend booting from a LiveCD or jump drive, saving what you have on the disk to a networked drive, and doing a reinstall.

I haven't ever ran into a situation where the OS overwrote its own boot sector unless I specifically told it to do so (no matter how 'full' it got).

Maybe, if he is savvy enough, he can load a microlinux (?) distro onto a jumpdrive with Samba installed on it to extract his needed data. Nonetheless, backups should have been performed as well, now maybe he will have the needed impetus.
Digg this Post!Add Post to del.icio.usBookmark Post in TechnoratiFurl this Post!
Reply With Quote
  #3 (permalink)  
Old 11-02-2007, 08:15 AM
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Kansas City, MO
Posts: 741
Lil Chris is on a distinguished road
Default

Thanks,
Like I said I haven't actually seen the PC in question, he said it just won't boot up, and thought the hard drive was full (it's only 20 gigs) it was one of those 400.00 dell jobbies... He did buy a mac laptop recently and they were able to copy some files over to the mac (they had to remove the HD to do it though)... So I'm actually not too sure of what the problem might be... Full HD was our hypothesis (this may not even be the problem)...
__________________
(mt) Professional Grade Hosting -
Digg this Post!Add Post to del.icio.usBookmark Post in TechnoratiFurl this Post!
Reply With Quote
  #4 (permalink)  
Old 11-02-2007, 02:09 PM
Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: NY
Posts: 57
mellom is on a distinguished road
Default

Yeah I've never heard of a full HD being the root of a system not booting. I would first ask what messages he/she is seeing and try to remedy the problem by booting into Safe Mode.
__________________
Flip Your Blog
Digg this Post!Add Post to del.icio.usBookmark Post in TechnoratiFurl this Post!
Reply With Quote
  #5 (permalink)  
Old 11-03-2007, 03:57 AM
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2006
Posts: 316
Minsc is on a distinguished road
Default

I don't know how Windows boots so I don't know if it would refuse to boot if your drive was full(is this Windows 98 or Windows NT?).

Anyway, if you were feeling lucky:
-Either find a Linux distro that can boot from a disk and has something installed to give it full write support for NTFS, or make one. You could probably download Lunar, fix it so that it doesn't need to write to files to boot(you could do this easily with a boot option if said computer has a couple hundred megabytes of RAM), and install the NTFS write program on it. Also, I'm not sure how to install GRUB on a CD.
-Use your boot disk to delete some files. This is kind of risky since it might actually corrupt your drive depending on how good the software you're using is.
-(if you're using Windows 98, ME, 95, ect, you could just delete files with any Linux install that has FAT support, which would be most of them, and you won't have to worry about messing up your drive although FAT doesn't have any protection from computer crashes)

Or you could just install Windows on another drive, use it do delete some files, and then go back and fix up whatever it did to the old drive. (last time I tried to do this, it managed to somehow make the drive undetectable to my BIOS, cfdisk, the Windows installer, anything except for itself)

EDIT: So do you know the OS version and error message?
__________________
There is nothing on sundersoft.com.
Digg this Post!Add Post to del.icio.usBookmark Post in TechnoratiFurl this Post!
Reply With Quote
  #6 (permalink)  
Old 11-03-2007, 11:21 AM
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Kansas City, MO
Posts: 741
Lil Chris is on a distinguished road
Default

Just that the OS is XP and he said he turns on the pc and nothing shows up on the screen (I'm assuming everything turns on ok, like the battery is charged and that the screen does come on and things like that...)
__________________
(mt) Professional Grade Hosting -
Digg this Post!Add Post to del.icio.usBookmark Post in TechnoratiFurl this Post!
Reply With Quote
  #7 (permalink)  
Old 11-03-2007, 04:35 PM
Moderator
 
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Berlin, Germany
Posts: 2,474
Brutha is on a distinguished road
Default

Even if you totally remove the harddisc your computer should give you something on the screen.
__________________
I am always open for feedback on my posts. That might focused on the argument at hand or on my writing style. If your feedback would go offtopic feel free to send me a Personal Message.

I don't believe in Beliefs.
Digg this Post!Add Post to del.icio.usBookmark Post in TechnoratiFurl this Post!
Reply With Quote
  #8 (permalink)  
Old 11-04-2007, 02:04 AM
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Kansas City, MO
Posts: 741
Lil Chris is on a distinguished road
Default

That's what I thought... (like the DOS boot screen or something)... I don't know I'll just have to wait and see it in person I guess...
__________________
(mt) Professional Grade Hosting -
Digg this Post!Add Post to del.icio.usBookmark Post in TechnoratiFurl this Post!
Reply With Quote
  #9 (permalink)  
Old 11-04-2007, 07:16 AM
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Vegas Baby!
Posts: 121
ixmatus is on a distinguished road
Default

Starting to sound like a bad BIOS to me. He should be able to atleast see a BIOS boot screen.

Otherwise, Minsc did give good advice as well - so if you can rule out the bad BIOS then I would give a Linux live cd a chance.
Digg this Post!Add Post to del.icio.usBookmark Post in TechnoratiFurl this Post!
Reply With Quote
Reply


Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are On
Pingbacks are On
Refbacks are Off

Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Squishy, The Super Cool Linux Fest 2007 Dan.Linehan Technology & Technical Skills 45 02-29-2008 08:19 PM
A Question - and Hello! Kura Ookami General & Introductions 2 09-01-2007 03:12 PM
Advice About Dual Booting Linux (Ubuntu) and XP. Andrew Michaels Technology & Technical Skills 7 06-21-2007 09:16 AM
Feedback wanted on an information management program for Windows tnantais Personal Effectiveness 2 01-02-2007 10:25 AM
Prevent links from opening in new windows (Firefox, Greasemonkey) tomjen Technology & Technical Skills 2 11-08-2006 12:35 PM


All times are GMT. The time now is 06:11 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.6.8
Copyright ©2000 - 2008, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Search Engine Optimization by vBSEO 3.1.0
Copyright © 2008 by Pavlina LLC