Need help with computer

Alright, here's the jist. I am on my roommate's lap top trying to get some insight into why my PC is bugging out. Don't say "because it's not a Mac", because I'll e-slap you.

Anyway, it started with my iPhone. I tried to update the software on it a while back and it corrupted the phone. E36 M3. So, I reinstalled everything on it and all was well for a couple of months... until I installed iPhone OS 3.0.1. During that install, the phone corrupted again. I thought it was because of the constant connecting and disconnecting that the phone was doing arbitrarily, and I remembered that an update to the new iTunes software did the trick last time.

This is where it gets interesting...

iTunes 9.0 installed nicely and I tried to restart the computer. Upon startup, right as Windows XP was loading, I got a blue screen of death saying "A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer. IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL..."

Soooo.... I couldn't get the thing to boot up anymore. I decided that now was as good a time as any to reformat my main drive since I had already backed up everything to the other hard drive. For some reason, and I have tried this twice now, Windows XP fails to install properly. I get like 10 messages saying that various .dll files cannot be copied to the disk. My CD is clean, and the drive works fine.

I click Enter to retry and it gives me the error again. Escape allows me to skip the installation of each file as they corrupt and continue with the installation.

Then, sometime during the Windows XP configuration / installation (the first time you see something other than blue background with white lettering), I get the blue screen again. This is where I am now (on the second go around). This morning, I was able to load Windows XP, but it was severly crippled and I could not get most features to work (themes, networking, some programs, etc.). That was when I decided to reformat it for the second time.

Help! I bricked my iPhone and my computer at the same time!

To sort of answer my own question... This is something I haven't tried yet, but I am willing to do tomorrow. I installed an extra Gigabyte of RAM in July. It was the right type of RAM for the board and it was correctly installed. However, I think it might be damaged. If I set the BIOS to run a full startup (not quick mode) and I allow it to test the memory, it runs the test several times and then says "Memory Test Fail. Press F1 to continue. Etc.".

Perhaps it's a hardware failure? Maybe the system is storing some of the crap that it pulls from the CD in the RAM while it writes other crap to the Hard Disk and the RAM is dumping it? I'm disappointed in myself and my computer right now. But I'm kinda excited to see Windows XP run with fewer than 100 processes at once.

It does sound like a hardware failure to me - the blue screen message you mentioned above is normally indicative of either a very poorly written driver or hardware that's playing up. At least if my recollection from way back when I wrote Windows drivers is correct.

If you get a memory test failure, pull out the new RAM. If it stops failing the tests, try to install Windows again (the duff RAM probably caused more corruption). If you still get the error with the old RAM, remove the old one and put only the new one in.

PS: This post was written on a Mac

I find it funny this was all caused by an iPhone...

And yes, pull the memory and see what happens. You have nothing to lose

I AM SO PISSED! I FORMATTED THE WRONG DRIVE! EVERYTHING IS GONE!!!!!!

Anyway, I formatted he C:\ drive the first time (my old drive and the one I intended to format). That was the first attempt to install windows. I could still see the E:\ drive (the one with my crap backed up on it) in Windows Explorer. Great. I'll just format the C:\ drive again, and.... POOF! Windows is now installed on my big 300 GB drive, I cannot see my old 40 GB drive anymore (at all, anywhere), and all of my files on BOTH drives are presumed missing. All of my iPhone contacts that I have added in the past year (quite a few), all of my music, videos, games, papers, documents, favorite web pages, EVERYTHING!

All of this was indeed caused by a malfunctioning RAM chip. I removed my new 1 GB chip and everything worked just fine. Great. Wasted money on a new chip, blew all of my data out the window, and berkeleyed up everything.

I am hoping to write back here that I am mistaken and that everything is fine... or at least that I berkeleyed up twice in a row in the same way and never touched the 40 GB drive. Either way, I still lost iTunes and all of my music and phone contacts.

God damn it.

confuZion3 wrote: I am hoping to write back here that I am mistaken and that everything is fine... or at least that I berkeleyed up twice in a row in the same way and never touched the 40 GB drive. Either way, I still lost iTunes and all of my music and phone contacts.

Yeah. That. ^^^^ I think.

ouch... that seriously sucks. I would never back up stuff onto an internal HD. I have an external and several Rewritable DVDs for backing up things on my three computers

I believe there were some people that had issues with iTunes causing Blue Screens like that. Not to say that you didn't have a hardware issue, but well there you go.

Oh E36 M3...if you're not very confident you know what you're doing you should unplug the power from the drive you don't want to format.

If you want to try recovering the data, DON'T USE THE DRIVE. You can probably recover some data using Recuva or a similar app. Get a USB hard drive reader kit:

($15-$25) access the drive with another computer and try using an app like Recuva

You'll have to save the files to a different drive from the accidentally formatted one. You might not get anything back but it's worth a shot.

Well, I was able to pretty much get everything back to normal. I got all my music from my iPod through a relatively simple procedure, got access to my old 40 GB drive's My Documents folder, and even found my backup of "My Documents" that I stored on my old iPod.

Coolio!

I still lost all of the contacts that weren't stored on the SIM card (anything from September 2008 until today). That's a bummer, but it really wasn't that many numbers. Hey, that's what Facebook is for! I even sorted through all 124 contacts and renamed them properly (ex. instead of "RACEWAY; SUMMIT PO.", I now have "Summit Point Raceway" in the Company section).

iTunes is on song 148 of 783, all my apps are back, and I'm heading to bed.

Thanks everybody!

So, in summary the iPhone made it all whacky and the iPod saved the day.

LOL Glad it's all back to (kinda) normal dude.

Yup. You got it EastCoast.

Apparently, two wrongs DO make a right!

I agree with GameboyRMH. If you want to recover your data, don't use the drive. You can try different unerase programs to restore deleted files. The best i have ever used is Advanced File Recovery. From my experience, it is a brilliant and reliable recovery software.

Machuk wrote: I agree with GameboyRMH. If you want to recover your data, don't use the drive. You can try different unerase programs to restore deleted files. The best i have ever used is Advanced File Recovery. From my experience, it is a brilliant and reliable recovery software.

Canoe?

petegossett wrote:

Machuk wrote: I agree with GameboyRMH. If you want to recover your data, don't use the drive. You can try different unerase programs to restore deleted files. The best i have ever used is Advanced File Recovery. From my experience, it is a brilliant and reliable recovery software.

Canoe?

No more than recommending any other commercial software (like Windows...)

OK, I just thought it was weird for someone's first post to be dragging up this thread from over a month ago.