My m14x died, help please

ok randomly last nite my m14x started closing all my programs deleting my icons and my background, opened like 32 error messages saying cant read disc, shut down on me, and now when i try to boot it it says read disc error press cntrl alt delete for recovery and wont go any further, i have never seen this happen before so would anybody shed some light on this for me, i dont care if i have to wipe it, i just want to recover my skyrim saves

but it seems like my drive just failed on me, or i got a super virus

 

hmm do you have another computer and a Hard drive caddy? I'd try to get all your skyrim saves off that way. Once you got that done, you can try to format the hard drive and see if windows will install on it

 

Sound like a hard drive failure to me, if you want to be sure if it really a HDD failure, then during the boot screen (the Alien Head screen), press F12 to enter the Boot Option, then select Dell Diagnostic, and wait for it to finish. What it do is the diagnostic all of the hardware in your laptop and report back any problem to you.

But can you boot into Windows? Because for me, when I found out that my HDD starting to fail, (symptom by getting many many different BSODs during idle), I still have chance to backup. If you can boot into Windows then try to backup all of your files, because once it fail it would be near impossible to retrieve those files back, well it possible but the price would be near the same as you get a new HDD.

 

Your $1300 laptop fails, for whatever reason, and you're worried about your game saves?

 

thats why i bought a warranty, laptop can be replaced, components fail all the time, game saves take forever to start from the beginning and work you way back

what i did was boot off my linux backtrack disc and recover my game saves and some other files then i installed windows 7 overtop of the existing one just so i could buy myself a little more time to back up games and test the drive a little more but it seems alot slower when it boots into windows, im still thinking the drive is bad

 

if you know its bad call up dell and get a replacement. If you have the cash you could upgrade to an SSD yourself if you wanted to though

 

Rofl, "I just want to recover my skyrim saves".

 

Talking about Skyrim, didnt Steam have the cloud service that will save your game save on Steam server? Because it save all of my save game of HL2 series, TF2, Portal 2 and Supreme Commander 2, but only if you're play Skyrim online all the time, not sure about Skyrim though. But it should be.

 

well yes it should but i had mine fixed so i could play without steam, yea i love steam for portal and hl2 and css but my games like nfs and grid and skyrim i hate being part of steam, ive been on vacation alot and away from internet and for me steam will not start offline :/ so i have the important games running without steam, also my nfs shift will not start because of steam, just launches and crashes

but i did get my laptop back and running, i guess it was just a nasty virus, diagnostics passed and said everything passed, but i have never seen any computer crash like this one, and my vista machine can no longer use wifi because of a virus, does anybody recommend a good anti virus for me to use from now on

 

For Steam, I also hate when those game developer turn to Steam. But for the offline start, I think I can help you to start it offline, by:

1- Start Steam
2- Log off and Log back on
3- On the online mode play a game, to see if it work online then quit the game.
4- After you quit the game, Select "Steam" > "Go Offline"
5- Then in the offline mode start that previous game again to see if it work offline too. And if it work then quit it.
6- This time you will be able to start steam offline, if you want to be sure, try disable the network card and start steam offline and play a game.

I cant see why Steam needed me to do this when I can just want to play game offline. But you may only do this once per installation, as long as you have your login credentials saved if you uninstall, you'll have to do this again.

For Antivirus. There free and paid. The free I can recommend the Microsoft Security Essential combine with Malwarebytes, I found it very effective because MSE mostly catch anything that Malwarebytes miss and vice versa. For paid AV, I can suggest the Kaspersky Internet Security 2011/2012, I found it is the best of all paid AV. But now I use MSE/Malwarebytes Combo, and never bump into any viruses since Malwarebytes would block the website that it think it contain virus and MSE will scan every file I try to open.

 

Off topic but was scrolling down the page and thought it said "My dad died, please help".

 

is it bad that that made me laugh a little?

well the problem for steam and me is that when its already closed and im offline, and i try to start it in offline mode it wont, i have to be online to start it in offline and i find it annoying, so i fix certain games to work without it

i use malware bytes on my desktop ill try those out and see how they work for me

 

on another note, how can i get back the webcam software? i really liked the one built in and i dont know where to get it back from