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My computer crashed; any advice?

PostPosted: Sun May 27, 2018 6:53 pm
by Iamwhomiam
Hi my 3yr old laptop crashed and when starting it up, the manufacturer's name and logo appears, and is soon replaced with "no bootable something or other. It is an ssd drive Acer "ultra slow" unit. So, who should I seek out for a fix? Staples, where it was purchased, has told me they would charge me nearly $300 to reboot it, with no guarantee of anything being retrieved.

A very strange event, to find myself so blacked-out of all news! I'll try to get access again tomorrow to the computer I'm sending this from. Of course I have nothing backed up or saved. so I'd appreciate any advice anyone has to offer. I have mcafee anti-virus, and I'm sure I closed the wrong running program in Task Manager that's caused my problem. I caused the crash.

Re: My computer crashed; any advice?

PostPosted: Mon May 28, 2018 12:00 am
by DrEvil
The "no bootable" message sounds like an issue with the hard drive / ssd. Closing something in Task Manager shouldn't prevent it from booting after a restart.

You could also go into BIOS (there should be a message on screen when you start the PC saying something like 'press delete to enter BIOS'. It could be a different key than delete) and check what's set as the boot drive. Make sure the hard drive is listed first. If not, change the boot order, save settings and reboot.

Re: My computer crashed; any advice?

PostPosted: Mon May 28, 2018 12:11 am
by Elvis
I bet it's your SS hard drive.

Apparently, SSD hard drives are known to burn out from Web browswers saving pages every second or less, in case it needs to 'recover' the last pages you were looking at. Constantly saving and deleting, saving and deleting, saving and deleting. You can lower the rate. When I replaced my SSD, I changed the FF save rate to every 30 seconds, plenty recent enough.

See here: Firefox is eating your SSD – here is how to fix it

It seems weird to me since the beauty of a solid state hard drive is "no moving parts"...yet it wears out from over-exertion. :shrug:

I forget which browsers are a problem that way; I think they all do it to some extent. I just about always use FF.

Re: My computer crashed; any advice?

PostPosted: Mon May 28, 2018 8:20 pm
by Iamwhomiam
Thanks, Elvis I'll check out the info at the line. When starting, I get the Acer logo and then a large centered icon of the outline of a conventional mechanical HD with a magnifying glass along with the message "no bootable..." something or other. That the acer log appears gives me hope all has not been lost. Yeah FF not too long ago went 64 bit. On to read before returning home. I'll check in as time allows. I'm pretty sure I shut down a windows process, but cant be sure the window didn't refresh and consequently shut down another process.
Maybe some of my younger friends are skilled in such things. Scary to learn how very dependent I've become on being connected! creepy I can't remember my passwords or FB or my email.

Considering all, I feel like a jackass for never learning how to segment and partition a HD for never backing up anything. Stupid this time might cost me more than $300: a few years lost work and entertainment memories. Plus a new unit.