Ohhhh... no

[Fish]

I was playing on my computer today looking at band saw boxes and patterns when I get that pop up of teds woodworking plans.  I hate that pop up when you try to go back one page, it keeps popping up the window “ are you sure you want to leave?”  Well, when I tried to go back from it today the computer froze then died.  Virus or not I lost ALL my scroll saw patterns.  Everything I’ve downloaded and everything I’ve done myself. I hadn’t made a cd. backup up of the patterns since 2015. Ya, slap me stupid.  I have a few but the number I lost is just killing me.  The computer can’t find the hard drive I’ve tried recovery cds, everything I have. It didn’t work. My only hope is taking it to a computer store here in town Tuesday.  I hadn’t even backed them up on our other computer. I’ve sure learned a lesson. I hope it is just a. Virus and can be restored.  Folks, please backup all your patterns don’t do what I just did.  

[jbrowning]

Dang, sorry to hear that Dan. That is why I keep mine on my computer, a copy on a external hard drive and a copy on dropbox.

Better safe than sorry.

I hope the computer store can help you out.

Jim

[spirithorse]

Hi, Fish,

I'm not incredibly computer savvy but, does your computer system have BACK UP AND RESTORE or RECOVERY DRIVE built into the system

that does automatic back-ups?
 

If you let some members know what system you are operating, you may get some tech savvy help.

God Bless! Spirithorse

[OCtoolguy]

I guarantee you that you have not lost everything. I would need a lot of questions answered but I'll bet we can get your stuff back. Don't don anything else that might make it recoverable. What operating system are you running? Which version of Windows? If you can pm me all your info, I'll try to guide you through recovery.

 

[KurtP]

Here is what i do to avoid this. 

Sign up for a Google account or Microsoft account or a Dropbox account and store your patterns on a free online storage.  Here is how much free storage i have with them

OneDrive 5G, Google Drive 15G, Drop Box 2G

Just these three give me 22 G of free online storage. That's tons of room to backup your patterns.

 

Kurt

[kmmcrafts]

Happen to me a couple years ago.. but my computer was fine.. what burned up was a back-up drive ( external )... I lost about 15,000 patterns that I had saved from 2005 - 20015.. Plus all my personal photos.. lucky that I had also backed up some ( very few ) onto disc.. 

Call me crazy now.. but I back up to new external drive, disc, and a zip drive memory stick.. as well as onto a second computer, LOL And.. two of the storage devices.. I keep in my shop... just in case my house was to be burnt down or something, LOL ... Still not sure that I wouldn't loose them.. but the odds are much more in favor of not loosing them that they was with just storing on my computer..    

[WayneMahler]

I keep mine on 2 external hard drives and also in disc form. Loosing this much information would be really bad. 

[bobscroll]

I feel really sorry for you Dan, I've done the same thing myself! I know the pop up you are talking about...It's a real pain in the A**.

After it was on My computer I deleted it off the computer then cleared My tempory internet files and didn't have a problem after!

Good luck on fixing the hard drive,

Bob

[GrampaJim]

If there is a Best Buy in your area, their Geek Squad my be able to fix it -  for a price.  I have never used them and almost never shop there, but it may be worth a try.

 

[munzieb]

Fish, This Ted's Woodworking plans is an insidious web site. Like you, I got trapped on his site and one time actually sat through his whole boring spiel. No mater how you try to leave, it goes back to his page like an endless loop. He will even tag onto other wood working sites on various search engines. The only way I could get out of it was to open the task bar window and close out the internet explorer. This guy is a plague and the IP should shut him down. As to your computer, there is a long winded process to get your files back and I have had to do this before. My computer had "The Blue Screen of Death" and there was no way of bringing it back. I had had it for a while and decided to upgrade. Each time one of my computers have died, I purchased a adaptor that will accept a stand alone hard drive. It's a case that is screwed together and your old HD mounts inside. It comes with a power supply and a USB adaptor cable that will hook up to another computer. Chances are that you operating system failed but all your other files should still be available on the HD. Once you plug it in is should come up with a drive letter on your file directory and you should be able to access them from the remote drive. Tough part may be getting the old HD out. Most upright case units are pretty easy. Remove the cover, unplug and unscrew the HD. There may be some mounting plates for your computer that may need to be removed to mount into the remote unit. I had a Dell "all in one" unit and it was more involved to get the HD out.

This is an example of one of the HD enclosures. I don't have the particular model shown but they all, pretty much, work the same. There are also adaptor cables available but once you have the enclosure, you have a backup drive.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Protronix-E35-B-USB-3-0-3-5-Inch-SATA-Hard-Drive-External-Enclosure/141701728628?hash=item20fe14c974:g:Gb4AAOSwQz1bCdCI

Good Luck!

[orangeman]

19 hours ago, Fish said:

I was playing on my computer today looking at band saw boxes and patterns when I get that pop up of teds woodworking plans.  I hate that pop up when you try to go back one page, it keeps popping up the window “ are you sure you want to leave?”  Well, when I tried to go back from it today the computer froze then died.  Virus or not I lost ALL my scroll saw patterns.  Everything I’ve downloaded and everything I’ve done myself. I hadn’t made a cd. backup up of the patterns since 2015. Ya, slap me stupid.  I have a few but the number I lost is just killing me.  The computer can’t find the hard drive I’ve tried recovery cds, everything I have. It didn’t work. My only hope is taking it to a computer store here in town Tuesday.  I hadn’t even backed them up on our other computer. I’ve sure learned a lesson. I hope it is just a. Virus and can be restored.  Folks, please backup all your patterns don’t do what I just did.  

Excellent advice. For about $5/month there are automatic backup services. I have Carbonite and my wife has Mozy.

Also, you can eliminate pop-ups by going to "settings" in your browser.

bb

[Fish]

Thank you everyone...but I have no clue what or really how it worked-I have windows 7 Home back!    I started from the beginning nothing worked and the last thing that came up was " Start up repair is checking for problems. If problems are found start up repair will  fix them automatically. Your computer may restart several times during this process. No changes will be made to your personal files or information, this might take several minutes".  This thing went on for a couple hours. I went to the garage, out to the store,  to dads for an hour and a half.  Anyway it fixed itself somehow. I got it back like nothing happened. I'd like to understand this thing but I'm not gonna try.  First thing I did was back up two things, pictures and scroll saw patterns. now I'm on SSV.  I'm also gonna put it all on line and my wife's computer too.  Again, thanks everyone for helping!

[munzieb]

Glad to hear you are back to square one. Backup, backup, backup and stay away from the weasel Ted!

[Dave Monk]

22 hours ago, Fish said:

I was playing on my computer today looking at band saw boxes and patterns when I get that pop up of teds woodworking plans.  I hate that pop up when you try to go back one page, it keeps popping up the window “ are you sure you want to leave?”  Well, when I tried to go back from it today the computer froze then died.  Virus or not I lost ALL my scroll saw patterns.  Everything I’ve downloaded and everything I’ve done myself. I hadn’t made a cd. backup up of the patterns since 2015. Ya, slap me stupid.  I have a few but the number I lost is just killing me.  The computer can’t find the hard drive I’ve tried recovery cds, everything I have. It didn’t work. My only hope is taking it to a computer store here in town Tuesday.  I hadn’t even backed them up on our other computer. I’ve sure learned a lesson. I hope it is just a. Virus and can be restored.  Folks, please backup all your patterns don’t do what I just did.  

Happened to me............hard drive was fried. Thank goodness a guy here in town was able to recover my data. 

Edited May 28, 2018 by Dave Monk

[Sparkey]

Don't know if it will work for that but I have fixed problems like that many times by going to restore and restoring my computer to the last point before the problem happened. I hope it works for you.

[Sparkey]

Glad you got it back.

[Fish]

I wasn't able to even log on anything. It came on and I could press F1 or F2 that was it. F1 was telling me it recognized no hard drive and F2 just told me what the computer was, hard drive version etc. At least the one cd I had started it somehow. I'm no computer wizard.

[OCtoolguy]

6 hours ago, Fish said:

I wasn't able to even log on anything. It came on and I could press F1 or F2 that was it. F1 was telling me it recognized no hard drive and F2 just told me what the computer was, hard drive version etc. At least the one cd I had started it somehow. I'm no computer wizard.

Somehow, your boot file got corrupted and by starting it with a cd, that had the file it was looking for. Now, go back and do a "disk cleanup" and then a defrag.

 

[crupiea]

If your computer is more than 5 years old they did you a favor pretty much.

You can restore it, you just need to hit a certain combination of keys on start up. It will put everything back to where it was but it wont change its age. 

Not sure this is the issue but many many times it is.

[Fish]

Thanks   I did another check disk too.  There was one other corrupted file it fixed.  

[wombatie]

I can't help you with your problems but you have just reminded me to back up my computer because I haven't done it for a while.  Hope all goes well with your computer.

Marg

[Falcon]

This might help you I have recovered files using this method because my computer would not boot. Hope it helps.

https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/15761/recover-data-like-a-forensics-expert-using-an-ubuntu-live-cd/

[danny]

I use McAfee and CCleaner.  Keeps the ole PC purring..................Danny  :+}

[3Dface]

i save all my patterns in my gmail. i click compose, address it to myself , attach the pattern, and click send. 

i move the received email to a pattern folder and delete the sent email to save space. 

[oldhudson]

When my computer died last year, just for the hell of it, I took it to Best Buy and let the Geek Squad work on it. Got it back in 3 days and it works fine, but stuff that wasn't backed-up gone forever.