NEED HELP

[Mel 0]

This is mainly for noobee's (and some not so noobee's).

To get the best help,consider the following.

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1.Start with a discription of your hardware .

a.Computer brand and model

b.Monitor brand and model

c.CPU type (Pentium,AMD athlon,etc.)

d.Any added hardware (CD drives/writers,DVD drives/writers,accelerators,sound/game cards,etc.)

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If you built your own, what motherboard,processor,sound card,video card,etc.?

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!!!IMPORTANT! Did your computer come with RESTORE CDs or are your restore files on harddrive ?!!!

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By giving what you can of above information,you will get more useful responses.

Not knowing what hardware you have results in more cautious advice because what works fine on my machine may be a nightmare on another.All computers are NOT created equal.(Many problems and solutions are hardware specific.)

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2.Describe the problem.

a.What you did or tried to do.

b.How far did you get ?

c.What happened at that point (Did computer freeze up, exit program, reboot, etc.?)

d.Were there any error messages,if so,what were they ?

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3.Users on this site will respond to your questions with solutions that have worked for them but remember, any one problem can be caused by many different things so what solves a problem this time may not help the same problem next time.If a suggestion doesn't work,post another message describing what it did or didn't do.That may ring a bell in someones coconut.

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I added the next section because I noticed a few noobees seemed to dissappear when advised to back

up data.

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4. "BACK UP YOUR DATA". (If that sounds scary to you, you may not need to.)

a."Backing up data" may be as simple as copying files you don't want to lose to CD or other removable media.

b.If you are using a word processor, spread sheet, data base, etc. and/or have important files saved to harddisk,then you need to back up your data.

c.If you only use your computer for games and internet etc. and your RESTORE program and games came on cd and you don't mind reinstalling them,you may not need to back up data.

d.If you have downloaded setup or packed files stored on your computer and want to keep them,then you should save them to removable media (CD, zip drive,etc.).(ie."Back up data".)

e.!!!Anytime you add or remove programs or resize,add or modify partitions or OSs, it is possible to lose or corrupt critical files.YOU have to decide what you want to backup.!!!

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!!!!! If you do not have RESTORE CDs then there are hidden partitions on your harddrive.Be very careful not to overwrite those partitions when creating Linux partitions.!!!!!

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If you DO have restore CDs ,then you can restore the operating system and programs that were on your computer when you took it out of the box from the CDs.It will NOT restore any files you added after you got the computer.This is a worst case scenario.

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Remember,no question is considered trivial on this site.All of us started with no more knowledge than you have (probably less).(Some of us antiques remember the "good old days" when, if you wanted to do something with your computer, you had to sit down and write your own program.How 'bout that,Dapper,Danleff? )

 

[danleff 0]

Nice Mel! Hopefully this will help those users asking questions more clearly, by clarifying what will help us help them...rather than "Please help, it doesn't work!"