What else could I do to fix my windows 10 pc?

[InDarkestNight]

Either way, that doesn't answer my question: why should I bother? If I'm not using it to game, and don't feel inclined to pick it up again, why bother with it? My laptop can handle yooutube, I can also program on it (its not like I was planning on making anything that required a lot of processing power), and I can obviously browse the internet on it. Its also clearly saving on my power bill, and I've noticed that my room has been a lot cooler ever since I was forced to stop using the gaming computer. Why bother then getting the thing to work again? It has my old data on it, but is it worth going through the trouble of getting the thing working again just to pull some folders off of it? Maybe I should just look into buying one of those cables that let you plug a computer harddrive into a usb port. That would let me get my data, and I wouldn't have to futz getting the stupid thing working again.

On the other hand, maybe I could plug the old disc in if I used the HP drive and installed ubuntu on it? I know years ago the cables for hard drives came with plugs for more than one drive. I've never thought about actually making use of that though. I wouldn't know anything about setting up a 'slave drive'. If I did plug in a drive with ubuntu installed on it, would I be able to access the folders from the windows 10 drive while running the ubuntu drive as if it was just an external harddrive?

[RomanR]

Is HD in your failed computer standard SATA? Otherwise I don't understand why you would need some special cable, as technician said. There are quite options of external boxes or docks to choose from, I would recommend one with its own power source. If backuping data is really all you need, then the easiest way is to connect it to your laptop and copy them to it, as you said. With your data backuped you have now practically unlimited options what to do with your failed computer.

You can try completely clean install (Win or other systems), boot some LiveCD/DVD focused on system diagnostics (Ultimate Boot CD or some live unix distro focused on rescuing data) to figure out what did go wrong for real etc. Who knows, if you will be successful, that feeling of accomplishment can return some joy you lost when battling with seemingly unsolveable problems which plagued your computer lately.

 

  

[InDarkestNight]

What the guy at staples did was take the drive out of my mother's laptop and plugged into the USB port of another computer. That's what he needed a dedicated cable for. I was asking if I actually needed to do that? I know the cables for drives (at least used to) had multiple plugs on them. I've however never thought about using them. What happens if you do connect more than one drive to your computer on that cable? I do not know. Could I open up the other drives like you do an external harddrive that plugs directly into the usb port? The only thing I've ever heard of someone doing was rigging their machine so they could switch between different hard drives, essentially making multiple computers that shared a cpu and graphics card, blah blah blah. He apparently had to do a lot of fiddling to do that though. He tried to plug in the drive from my sister's laptop to access it, but it didn't work due to the way he had to set up his computer to get the multiple-computers-in-one-machine thing working.

Point is, I know nothing about this and have no clue what may happen if I did put something into those extra slots. As for the type of plug they use, the computers are only like 3 years apart from each other and are both desktops, so I assume the plug is the same. It would be sorta hard to actually transfer the hardrive over though, since the top of my gaming computing is being used to store tech stuff, and due to my living arrangements I don't really have any table space to perform such an operation on. That's not really related to this though, its something in my personal life THAT I CAN'T DO A DAMNED THING ABOUT. Let's just say I've been contemplating taking one of my relatives WHO DOESN'T EVEN LIVE WITH ME to court over this. Point is, I may not be able to do such an operation anyway. Fml.

[RomanR]

Now I understand, he propably used some cable with integrated SATA to USB converter. In form of cable, box or dock they are quite common accessory.  I'm using something like this too in the form of dock (AXAGON ADSA-ST to be precise). It saves me from need to open my computer and connecting my cold-storage-backup HDs directly to SATA (these connectors are hard to access on my motherboard). 

And no, SATA controllers don't support connecting multiple drives on one data cable, for every drive have their own connector. You're propably referencing old flat IDE cable, which allows to connect two drives which must be properly set to Master and Slave? 

Edited November 26, 2023 by RomanR
Typos

[HeyYou]

I have never tired installing windows on an existing partition, that had windows on it already.... I don't know if the installer would format the partition, hence, destroying all data on it, or simply overwrite what was already there. If you have a couple extra USB drives, could install Parted Magic on one, boot to that, then then copy whatever data you want to some other media.....

What bluescreen error are you getting? I might have a workaround for it.....

[xrayy]

as long as you have no clue what exactly stalled your rig keep cool. any measures to repair or sanitize make no sense if do don`t know what.

if your win 10 pc failed do launch it is a good idea to think about what you changed the last days.

was it a blue screen ? Was it anything else ? as long as you do not react weird nothing bad happens as long there is no virus on your pc. in this case you best use an independent external source to check if your pc is free of that and your hardware is working properly.

small things like a full disk or volume can break win 10 if you do not react  while installing or updating software.

another thing is hardware instability like overheating or bad memory. but these things happen with a pattern and an error message you can narrow down.

a would abstain from reinstalling anything as long as the reason for instability is unknown.

 

 

 

 

 

[InDarkestNight]

It just tells me 'this computer failed to start'. It then shows some percentage incrementing up. It then tries to repair the computer on re-boot, but always says it cannot. After a try or two, it then goes to WinRe. It insists I log in to use any of its options, but it never accepts my password. The only way I can bypass this is to open winre through either the usb or the repair disc I made with this laptop. None of the options offered accomplish anything regardless of whether I use the disc or the usb.

[HeyYou]

It's time to back up your data, and do a reinstall.....

[InDarkestNight]

And how do I backup my data when I can't get the thing to boot up? Besides, it won't save the programs I have installed (such as my pre-ae SE, not that I had any intents on playing it again anyway). Besides, my laptop can do everything I was doing with the thing anyway. Its why I haven't replied so long; I haven't tried to fix the thing again in days, and I still don't feel the need to do so.

I have however made a backup of the data on my laptop here. Though I do have a problem now that this thing keeps saying it wants to upload a backup of this thing on the f*#@ing internet (who the hell in their right mind would ever do that, seriously?). It apparently thinks this thing was having problems simply because I used it to make a repair disc. If I made a repair disc with this thing, then why would it be assuming that this is the broken computer? If it was broken, I wouldn't have been able to do that. Wtf?

Edited December 1, 2023 by InDarkestNight

[zixi]

5 hours ago, InDarkestNight said:

who the hell in their right mind would ever do that, seriously

The same people who trust organisations with all their logins? 

Regarding reinstallation -   have you tried to do that? I seem to remember that reinstallation often caused Windows to attempt a repair which sometimes did the trick. Maybe Windows savvy people (I'm Linux based) can confirm if that's still the case.  If I get to the reinstallation stage then I tend to want to wipe the thing, reformat the hard drive and start fresh. I've  found the decision between hardware failure and software failure hard to work out sometimes so I always want to rule out an issue with the hard drive first as it's the easiest for me to solve...

Not sure if you know this but if you don't have access to a Windows OS disc then MS will supply an image via download. 

If you do reinstall then I hope it fixes as easily as possible!