"Dave Cornwell" wrote in message
...
Well it had to happen one day, hard drive failure. I must have seen it
coming although there were no signs from my trusty four year old home
built PC, as I had ordered a new one a few days earlier. It suddenly
wouldn't boot fully into Windows. Not overly concerned as the data on the
hard drive was probably ok at this point, I went through my usual recovery
tricks of XP repair, rescue disk ,booting from various Linux disks and so
on. Couldn't even get to restore through DOS or Safe mode. But they all
just continuously started up then powered down just before they got to the
Desktop. Now previously I had helped my daughter (they don't do backups do
they) recover data from a non-bootable HD by using an IDE to USB drive
converter - a brilliant idea that worked well. So I got out the same kit
and it fried my HD! I think the 12v power supply must have failed and put
out too much voltage. (I thought it might be worth mentioning to warn
people to be extra careful if they need to go down that route).
Now luckily I had backed up all of my images (20 gigs worth!) 3 days
before, My and my wife's Docs a few months before and emails seemed to be
still on the Virgin Server. So not the tragedy it could have been but as
you know- a big pain starting a new system up from scratch which brings me
on to my main point - Windows 7 !!
After reading some reviews that it was much better than Vista I thought it
was probably time to upgrade from my longstanding and sometimes
troublesome XP. How disappointed I was. My first reaction is that it is
less intuitive, dumbed down and has actually lost features like a calendar
and Outlook Express. The Windows LiveMail I am using here is so cluttered
and full of stuff it's very unfriendly. This brings me to a question that
has often been asked and which I have previously taken little heed of in
the past:-
What free email clients are any good? Simple is good as long as it deals
with Newsgroups.
Now to catch up with the weather - did someone mention cold while I was
away ;-)

Dave

I know with windows 7 you can then run at 64bit thus much faster and more
memory -in my case anyhow.

At the moment my athlon 64 dual core 6000 is apparently limited by XP which
in turn only allows 3gb of ram. Of course unless you're a gamer or want to
run hi def films or video processing why all the powr and speed?

Mind you I've had problems the last several days. Kept losing the picture or
the whole system jsut hanging requiring a reboot but as I have the PC
running via HDMI into a larger LED screen I can't see the boot up info; it
goes straight into desk top image. That means if aI have a fault and want to
go into safe mode or bios etc, I have to fit another monitor. Anyhow it
tirns out my fault was due to the earthing sheath on the power supply lead
was resting on the graphics card and apparently shorting the card out or
hanging the video onece moved no problems since. Howevr your predicament is
a timely warning that it's time to back up.

By the way to all and sundry I'n not going to apologise for not mentioning
the weather......oops too late.