bricked Vista laptop

[unix]

I powered it down by holding the power button and ever since then, it doesn't boot and goes into this infinite loop trying to "fix" it. Tried the recovery image DVD but it won't install off of it since the image is older than the one installed.

Working with the help desk to send me the new image... Looks like I will be restricted to Outlook emails today.

Never saw it happen with XP.

[Walter Mitty]

As I always say,  "four legs good, two legs ba-a-a-a-d."

[pxsant]

Do you have a copy of XP amoung your relics?   I would deep six Vista and install XP myself.  Or, if the laptop has enough memory, order an OEM version of windows 7.   Anything but Vista!

[Richardk]

Maybe I'm thinking of a different disc but doesn't it have a "repair" option when it first loads? Every 'recovery image DVD' will be older once you apply any updates, so I'd think that should still work unless you mean it's a backup.

[unix]

I requested an image of Windows 7. Install was easy but took me a while to manually configure all the stuff I lost.  VPN settings, digital badge, etc. All the little aggravating things.

Half a day of downtime if you don't count emails and meetings.
I do need some kind of a backup solution. Maybe just burn the data on a DVD.

Mental note: Don't shutdown the machine by pushing and holding the power button.  I knew it wasn't a good thing to do (And got away with it in XP and I think Seven) but I didn't think the engine would fall out of the car this bad.

[TRexx]

I do need some kind of a backup solution. Maybe just burn the data on a DVD.

You can buy an external 2TB disk dive for under $100. Many come with some sort of backup program that you can set up to run automatically every night. 

[DarkHumour]

There are also usb tape backups still available.   Maybe that is an outdated solution but unless you're stepping on the tape or running magnets over it I think it will be a better data archiving solution as an external drive will eventually crap out as well. 

I suggest drive backups for people who can't handle tapes.

Or want to use the same tape over and over again and then wonder why the version of the report from a year ago isn't on it...

DarkHumour

[Richardk]

USB tape drive? Really? That got me wondering about those old cartridge tapes. I still have a box of them somewhere. I wonder if it would work with a XP box?

Hmm, something for a rainy day.

[DarkHumour]

USB tape drive? Really? That got me wondering about those old cartridge tapes. I still have a box of them somewhere. I wonder if it would work with a XP box?

Hmm, something for a rainy day.

Yeah, They have USB DAT and USB LTO as well.. The bandwidth of the latter I would think would set the usb cable on fire.   There are always some quasi kludgey devices that convert scsi to usb as well out there.   Hmm, I have a SCSI DLT drive in a spare server in my office. I should look into that (rather than move the controller card to the target machine).

They also have these in sata as well so if you have eSATA as an option on your pcs....

DarkHumour