Turned on the computer yesterday morning... 5 minutes later bzaaaaaap! Screen went black... Took it in to the Geeksters expecting no big deal, like the other few times... after trying multiple things along with removing the back and taking out a few chunks and tossing them in the air, chanting... ... he calmly says... yeah, looks like the mother board has died. Mom was only 5 years old I said... So... $1000 later he was transfering most of the info, including pics, to a smaller screen version. My honey and I are now going nuts trying to remember how to remember a whole new way of doing the same thing... ...
Not really liking your post but I am glad you were able to salvage your info and pics. Can't have you disappear from FHC for very long.
You could have bought an inexpensive laptop/decktop removed the hard drive from the broken unit and transferred the pic/data to the new unit.
Oh hellz no Stinny. Definitely cudda' done that for a lot less moola. If we were closer, I wudda' done it for nuttin'. Other than all kindsa woodworking, computers are another fun time hobby. Was this a desktop? Even high end mamaboards are no more than a couple hundred. Gooder thing is.......you're baaaaack! Remembering how to remember is tough, eh? Yep.
It was a 15" Macbook Pro that smoked out... quoted $800 to replace the motherboard after it was sent to Kentucky for a few weeks. We went with the cheapest sorta same unit, 13" at a grand. The new wiz bang 15" was $2300... ... I'd been wiz banged enough.
We had Dell desktop for years. Thru our hands up in 2009 when it quit. We stayed off the net for 2 years. (It can be done) Then, our daughter was having her first baby and Grammy was gonna see emailed pics ... so we opted for the hi quality screen on the Mac. The transition from Windows to the Mac almost caused a divorce... ... we're not into computers at all, just enough so they drive us mad...
I built all my own desktops starting in '95, until I got a laptop in 2000 or so. That all tapered off at that point.
Got a story about building those things, and I'm sure you didn't have any issues with it... but it's what I always think first now... There used to be a guy here in Maine who built towers for business and got a little too full of himself I guess. He walked into a large logging and lumber op office and "sold" the idea of his unit changing everything in their office. We know the office manager well. When the guy was ready to transfer all of their customer information from the old computer to his new one, the office manager asked if he ought to back that up before hand and was told not to worry, it's never been a problem. That comment rang in her head for 2 months straight as she re-typed in every single bit of info off paper copies, for 10 years of customers... kinda reminds me of 2008 and that hope n changey thing...
Always told folks to backup any important data like pics, and documents. Did they listen? Not usually. Some got lucky and I was able to save stuff.......others not so much. Issues? Oh heck yeah, I got issues. I'm hopin' for a different kinda change.
I always tell my customers to back up their own before they bring it in, otherwise I charge for my time backing up their data. And I've only had one customer ever actually back it up their self! My fav are the ones that say they don't need anything and then once it's all gone they want to know where their pictures/data/bookmarks went....
Best Buy will take old electronics free, and dispose of em properly. I have taken a bunch of stuff there