Linux almost saved my day
21 August 2006 Me & my blog
Last week Tuesday, my pride and joy, decided to stop booting, and nothing i did helped. I couldn’t get into Safe Mode, and worst of all the fail-safe method of booting the Windows CD and “repairing” Windows didn’t work. It would boot, load the drivers, and just before the format or install Windows menu appears, the PC just hangs.
Worst of all, I had got pretty complacent about doing backups, and because of that, I had files on this laptop that I had nowhere else. :-(
Linux to the rescue
What to do? Defza came to my rescue and gave me a Live Linux CD. ( For those less informed, its Linux that runs of a CD, straight out the box. No installation needed.) So here I was, a Windows user, quickly learning Bash syntax, mounting and unmounting USB flash drives, and copying all the files I forgot to backup off the laptop and onto another PC.
I lost 2 days because of this laptop, and we still don’t know what is wrong. I formatted the hard drive from Linux, and the Windows CD still didn’t give me that menu I was oh-so-wanting to see for 2 days. So I started up the extra laptop that we had ordered, and made it my own. The non-booting Windows laptop is off to the supplier to find out what went wrong. So after all my struggles, it looks like some sort of hardware issue. :-( The only good thing that came from this is I learnt some very valuable lessons.
So here are my 4 tips on how to get your PC up and running again in next to no time after experiencing software or hardware failure.
- Backup your crucial files! Use a product like Beyond Compare that will backup all your files off to another networked PC. Backup your emails, critical work docs and all development files daily. It literally takes seconds to do this type of backup, but do you think we do them regularly enough? (Backing up to CD everyday, takes way to long. So hiving your files off to another PC everyday, and doing DVD backups once a month, saves you alot of time and effort.)
- Have a Windows CD, Linux CD or a Recovery CD handy at all times. You never know when your PC will crash and you are going to need to recover something off it using some sort of Live CD.
- Hardware backups. This is an expensive option, but having a PC that you are able to turn to when your main machine dies, is sometimes crucial. You might just as well take a weeks holiday while you wait for your only PC to be repaired at your supplier.
- Have a smart friend proficient in talking the language of PC, only a phone call away. You might think you know everything, but when the pressure is on, you might not be thinking of the most simple thing that might fix your problem.
So there you have it. I’m happy to report that I’m backup again, pun intended.
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Mike Stopforth
4 comments so far...
Jason,
I would have to say you’re right on all counts. It just sucks when that happens and I always carry 2 to 3 linux live CDs, I use SLAX which is a Slackware derivative and it gets me out of them tough spots.
Heck I’m the neighbourhood guru, going about fixing other peoples messes. If they only knew ;)
3:24 pm
Simple solution…Use linux…
Linux is:
* More dependable.
* Easier to use (in a lot of cases)
* Easier to develop in (most distros come with Python, perl, gcc etc. in the box)
* Free to use, change, and improve
* Easy to make backups of (without expensive/demo software)
* Can usually be repaired with a live CD, or the original distro CD
* Takes around 30 minutes to an hour to do a complete re-install (including all extra apps you downloaded)
* Secure (currently no viruses of the form windows users live with)
etc.
This message brought to you for free…Try a real OS like Ubuntu today, and drop windows like the piece of crap it is.
4:22 pm
Hi D-Arb,
There will always be tons of reasons to switch to and from Linux, and this ain’t the place to start the great “Linux vs. MS debate”, but all I can say is that one of the reasons I use MS is a financial one.
Financially, if a company can afford to roll out Terminal Services running on 300+ desktops, can afford MS Exchange, can afford to run MSSQL 2005, then I definitely want them as a client.
I’m all for open-source and where it is going, but we have to agree, that MS is a multi-billion dollar industry. Wouldn’t you want a piece of that pie? I would. ;-)
4:36 pm
No reason why you can’t run linux if your clients run windows… ;)
Just saying there are a lot of good reasons to try it out ;)
I can respect windows…MS makes life easy in some ways, but I know that after using Linux for 5 years I pull my hair out every time i have to diagnose a problem in windows, or get it to do some specific thing, etc.
I don’t want everyone running linux, just enough to make MS improve the bits they are terrible at ;)
10:22 pm
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