My mother's Dell Inspron 8100 died the other day. Through the process of trying to find out what went wrong with it, we lost the boot sector of her hard drive. What can I do to recover it without losing the information on it? I purchased a USB to sata/ide adapter and it recognizes it there but nothing shows on windows explorer. I tried another drive and it shows up. Is there a safe and easy way to repair the boot sector without losing the information on it?A problem with a hard drive's boot sector is bad --- very bad --- but not necessarily fatal. In my Windows Secrets column this week, I'll show you how to use free tools (some of which you almost surely already own!) to fix this very nasty problem.
The other items this week include:
- Running ancient software in Vista
- Lost Outlook Express contacts --- again!
- Oops! Trialware/Freeware confusion
- Where did these "adult" photos come from?
Full info (you start by signing up for the spam-proof free version) here:
http://windowssecrets.com/
Thanks for checking it out!
Fred, I already emailed the editor about this problem as soon as I saw it, but it hasn't been fixed yet; you might be able to get through though as your content is affected by this.
ReplyDeleteIt seems that the full Paid edition content for the latest newsletter is available to anybody - see http://windowssecrets.com/comp/091001/#lplus0 to see what I mean. (That's your content!)
I'm only a standard subscriber, and I got the paid content in my email newsletter too. (It was still *marked* as the Comp version, and the general layout was the same as what I normally get - for example, I didn't get the "You're reading the paid version of Windows Secrets" section that would normally occur in a Paid newsletter. But I did get all the Paid content too.
Just thought I'd let you know.
Thanks, Sophie! I'm not involved with the back-end processes at Windows Secrets, so you did the right thing by writing to them directly. If they haven't thanked you, let me do so, for them.
ReplyDeleteI'd actually prefer that my stuff be open to all anyway, but that's not my shot to call. And with WS's honor-system payment--- a once-a-year payment in whatever amount the reader decides, large or small, to gain access to all the paid-for content--- it's a low financial hurdle: a few pennies an issue.
But again, thanks!
Ah, I was assuming that since it was in the Paid section, that you would be getting paid more for it than if it was in the free section.
ReplyDeleteI must admit, I'm a little bummed that your stuff goes in there too; I was a long-time subscriber to the LangaList when it was its own newsletter, and a Plus! subscriber for a lot of that time. But even your free stuff was a lot more useful than I tend to find a lot of the WS stuff! I don't have a complaint about the cost, obviously - I've been a paid subscriber to WS in the past - but at this point I'm kind of not doing it out of principle.
Of course, this isn't any sort of exhortation to strike it out alone again - that'd just be unnecessarily wearing, I suspect. And I do remember how you pulled out from WS before, only to have them ask for you back...
I do hope you're doing okay, though. :) Take care of yourself.
- Sophie.