Totally Lost Newbie,Files DUMPED Help please

Let me start by saying I will most likely not be able to follow any detailed directions as I have very little computer savy.

My wife's laptop is routed through my computer (I think that is an accurate description but take it with a grain of salt please).

I just heard the "What happened to my computer?!" coming from the other room and she said some type of "zone alert has been turned off would you like to restart" came on her screen which she clicked okay on then her screen went blue and it said "Physical Dump complete" (or something to that affect, I can ask her specifically when she gets back if needed).

We both work for ourselves and she just lost EVERYTHING right in the middle of a big job our family depends on.No she has not backed anything up,and she will not be able to take it somewhere for over a couple days as the work must be done this week.

Any ideas what the heck happened (she has a Windows XP recovery disc) she is going to try, but is there some virus on the loose?

Obviously mine is still working for now.

Help please.

Regards,

John

 

All these smart people on here (I read some of your threads,impressive) and no one can tell me (or guess) what might have happened or how to proceed?

If I am asking for too much help I understand if you don't want to get into it but can I get a rough idea of how to try and resolve this please?

Thanks in advance for any assitance.

My hobby is old cars so I am lost here

 

what software was installed on that laptop?
it does seem like some sort of virus.
but on the other hand psysical dump could just be a error with windows which meant windows had to make a dump file and couldnt load up windows afterwards.
lodore

 

infact can you press f8 during windows loading and scroll down to safe mode?
if so load safe mode. then you should be able to get your data off to some form of media
lodore

 

Okay............how about a suggestion for a web site that might be better suited to this question?

Just need a little help please

Forgot to tell you the black screen says, use "Windows 32 set up disc" now needed but guess what?

Of course we can find it,looks like we will be sharing the same computer for a little while

Thanks,

John

 

You can always use a linux livecd like Ubuntu or Knoppix to backup data across network, external disk or usb memory stick, then wipe computer and restore to factory defaults with your recovery media

 

You can post your problem on the castlecops forum and someone there might have some suggestions.

On the error message, you reference Zone Alert. Was that a typo and you meant Zone Alarm?
Hopefully, the system can still boot up, although the work that was being done at the time of the abort may be lost unless there is an auto save feature of the program that was being used.

Good luck.

 

John, there are 3 posts directly above this last one of yours asking questions that you haven't answered. Instead you simply asked for a referral to another site as if you didn't even read the replies. If you want help you need to do some replies.

 

Sorry for the delay gentlemen, I neglected to subscribe to the thread so I didn't get any post notifications while I was looking elsewhere for help.

She has Windows XP, and that was a typo on zone alarm.

She has a friend who's husband work on computers for a large bank so she is taking it over there, so we will see how it goes.

One of my car friends said we would probably have to "recover the hive and it is allot of typing".

Thank you very much for the suggestions,and hopefully Scott will be able to recover what she needed.

Appreciate the advice and informtaion.

Different world but here is what I work on for my hobby.I always have great respect for everyone's hobby though as I learn their passion.

Regards,

John

 

It seems that you'll have to use recovery tools such as PC Inspector File Recovery.

 

Here is a link that lists some file recovery utility programs.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/downloads38.html

It appears that your firewall program was shutdown for some reason and then you got a computer dump after you chose to accept the reboot request. There is the possibility that the computer was hit by some kind of malware that shut down the firewall. Or the firewall program may have aborted due to some conflict with another program in use. There are too many variables in play when your system shuts down. As a suggestion for the future, I would recommend that you back up the important files on your main drive off to another drive or offline storage device on a scheduled timeframe. That would allow you to have at least the information available even though it may not be up to date if you should need to restore it. If your PC does not boot up at all, then a system file(s) most likely has been corrupted. Good luck on getting the system back in a working order.

By the way, when I get a prompt to restart the computer due to a program being updated or a system halt, I never reply in the affirmative because I don't like closing off the system like that with other processes still being active. I want to shut down each process manually even though that is more tedious and more slower.