# Computer Crash



## Trade (Jul 18, 2019)

The day before yesterday I must have mistakenly hit some button that said "make this your home page". Instead of teying to figure out how to change it back, I hate windows 10 because everything is a pain in the butt to figure out, I decided to take the lazy way out and just do a system restore. This was the first time I've done this on my current computer that I bought last December. It turned out to be a big mistake. It took an *hour and a half *to run through system restore and when it was done my computer would not boot up. I got the "Blue Screen of Death". So I called Dell support. After about 1/2 hour with the first heavily accented dude he determined that it was not a hardware problem, but a software problem and transfered me to some other heavenly accented dude who told me that the one year warrently that comes with Dell computers only covers hardware, not software. So right aawy he tries to sell me a $269 plan that covers both hardware and software issues. Well I only paid $349 for the computer so I said what do you have for less? And then he tries to sell me a one year software plan for $169. Well still about 1/2 of what the computer cost me so I asked him how much for a one time fix. He tells me $129. By now I'm pretty pissed that Dell has sold me a computer that crashes the first time I try to run system restore. So I said I'll have to think about it. As soon as I said that he went into the high pressure sales mode, I guess because that's how he makes his daily bread, by commisions. So I just cut him off in mid spiel and said "Thank you, I'll think about it and get back to you if I decide to go that route" and hung up. 

Then I started tapping the F12 key while I was trying to boot it up and I found what I call, "The Nuclear Option". I had done this once before about 10 years ago on my old Dell desktop. What it does it wipe everything out and return your computer to the same state as it was when you first take it out of the box. I lost a lot of stuff since the last time I had backed up to my external hard drive was back in December when I got rid of my old laptop and bought this one. And I had to set everything back up from scratch, which I am still in the process of. But at least I had the satisfaction of not having to pay Dell $129 bucks.


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## johndoe (Jul 18, 2019)

I had to do the same thing once. You will have to go and get all the MS updates you are now missing. It took me many days with about 150 past updates since the computer was about 10 years old.


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## Judycat (Jul 18, 2019)

Good for you!!! These machines are so contemptible. System Restore should restore your system, that's why it's there. I call it Doorstop Mode because that's what often becomes of your computer after you try using it.


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## Don M. (Jul 18, 2019)

Computers can/will crap out at the worst possible times.  It's a good idea to create a Recovery Disk, and back up your files to an external hard drive regularly.


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## Ken N Tx (Jul 19, 2019)

The only thing I hate loosing is pictures, I use to back them up with a UBS Flash drive. Now with Chromebook, they are stored on the cloud and I can access them from any devise..I still use USB..


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## Rosemarie (Jul 19, 2019)

This is why it's a good idea to have more than one device, especially if you run a business over the internet or are on ebay. I much prefer using my chromebook because my computer has windows and it's too busy doing its own thing to let me get on with what I want to do.


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## Butterfly (Jul 19, 2019)

Trade said:


> The day before yesterday I must have mistakenly hit some button that said "make this your home page". Instead of teying to figure out how to change it back, I hate windows 10 because everything is a pain in the butt to figure out, I decided to take the lazy way out and just do a system restore. This was the first time I've done this on my current computer that I bought last December. It turned out to be a big mistake. It took an *hour and a half *to run through system restore and when it was done my computer would not boot up. I got the "Blue Screen of Death". So I called Dell support. After about 1/2 hour with the first heavily accented dude he determined that it was not a hardware problem, but a software problem and transfered me to some other heavenly accented dude who told me that the one year warrently that comes with Dell computers only covers hardware, not software. So right aawy he tries to sell me a $269 plan that covers both hardware and software issues. Well I only paid $349 for the computer so I said what do you have for less? And then he tries to sell me a one year software plan for $169. Well still about 1/2 of what the computer cost me so I asked him how much for a one time fix. He tells me $129. By now I'm pretty pissed that Dell has sold me a computer that crashes the first time I try to run system restore. So I said I'll have to think about it. As soon as I said that he went into the high pressure sales mode, I guess because that's how he makes his daily bread, by commisions. So I just cut him off in mid spiel and said "Thank you, I'll think about it and get back to you if I decide to go that route" and hung up.
> 
> Then I started tapping the F12 key while I was trying to boot it up and I found what I call, "The Nuclear Option". I had done this once before about 10 years ago on my old Dell desktop. What it does it wipe everything out and return your computer to the same state as it was when you first take it out of the box. I lost a lot of stuff since the last time I had backed up to my external hard drive was back in December when I got rid of my old laptop and bought this one. And I had to set everything back up from scratch, which I am still in the process of. But at least I had the satisfaction of not having to pay Dell $129 bucks.



Trade, computers bought from Dell usually come with a year of service for free.  At least mine always have.  I wonder why yours didn't.


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## fmdog44 (Jul 26, 2019)

My Dell has plowed through every kind of attack known to man. Yesterday I had the biggest one of all that included a siren like chirping sound. The screen showed Windows with overlays of Internet Explorer asking for the user name and password and I could not click off. I pulled the battery and it still was there. I shut it down and waited and when I hit the power button it immediately went to the crazy screen again. I finally got rid of this freaky thing by hitting Alt>Ctrl>Del simultaneously which I tried earlier but it failed and this time it was gone!. Now my very old Dell is back and working fine. Don't ask me.


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## Trade (Jul 26, 2019)

Butterfly said:


> Trade, computers bought from Dell usually come with a year of service for free.  At least mine always have.  I wonder why yours didn't.



That's what I thought. But the people at Dell support told me that it only covers hardware problems and since mine was a software problem, I was going to have to pay them. At least that's their story and they're stickin to it.


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## Camper6 (Jul 29, 2019)

I found out that system restore is a poor way of fixing a problem because you go back to a previous time, so you are missing something that may have been added later.

How did you finally resolve this?


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## JustBonee (Jul 29, 2019)

How is it going @Trade ?   Are you up and running yet?   Miss ya!


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## Bananas (Jul 29, 2019)

It's not a bad idea to create a 'Restore Point' now and again. You can set the system to take them automatically in the Configure box.

If you restore back to a previously created Restore point, it does not affect you personal data, and it only sets your software back to how it was at that time. It takes seconds.


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## Camper6 (Aug 1, 2019)

Or it can sink you as shown.


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