Error-Message of the day

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

My ancient, and rather lovely, Sony vaio VGN-B1XP laptop just produced this:

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so, I pressed F1

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MichaelG.

 

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Removed one screw and slid-out the hard-drive

popped it back-in and rebooted

Good as ever !

MichaelG.

[NealebParticipant @nealeb]

I have a Dell PC in the garage which dedicated to driving my CNC lathe and which was bought second-hand off a well-known auction site. Works a dream, except every couple of months it fails to boot and the flashing LED shows the code for “memory configuration error”. Switch off, pop off the lid, swap the two memory modules, lid back on, reboot. No idea why but it seems it’s a known problem. Works every time, even though the same memory modules are cycling between the same slots on the motherboard. Like Michael’s disk problem, probably a contact issue, I would guess. Switching off and reseating every plug (including the CPU once) has fixed more than one problem for me.

[Clive Brown 1Participant @clivebrown1]

When the hardware Self Monitoring Analysis Reporting Technology wakes up, there is probably some damage to the disc. You may be fortunate and it keeps working a good while longer, but it’s not “as good as ever”. Critical failure is a possibility.

[Martin ConnellyParticipant @martinconnelly55370]

I have a laptop that does not get past the power on self test if there are too many USB devices plugged in at boot up.

Martin c

[Robert Atkinson 2Participant @robertatkinson2]

Clone the disk to a 2.5″ IDE solid state drive. You can get adaptor on ebay that take a mSATA card internally. For example:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/167606796572
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/177020366254

I just ordered a pair to replace the HDD in a piece of test equipment.

I have a old Sony PCG-F305 that I’ve owned from new. It’s at least 20 years old and is still working unlike 3 of the laptops that replaced it… I have another 4 PCG series laptops set up for specific operating systems or tasks. New enough to have USB and Firewire, old enough to have a floppy disk, CD-ROM, serial port and a proper parallel printer port.

Robert.

[Robert Atkinson 2]

On Robert Atkinson 2 Said:

Clone the disk to a 2.5″ IDE solid state drive. You can get adaptor on ebay that take a mSATA card internally.

But the big question is: can you do that with the C: drive, where usually the Windows system resides. Istr that somehow Windows remembers the disk it sits on, and refuses to work on another disk. Maybe that has changed, and I would be very happy if I could replace the very small and almost full C: on my
computer. It is a SSD, but quite an old one from the time when they have been very expensive.

Regards,
Hans

[Clive Brown 1Participant @clivebrown1]

Normal procedure using third-party cloning software for installation of a new primary drive. Windows will not copy itself however.

[NealebParticipant @nealeb]

Yes, there are a few (free) disk cloning tools around that typically run off a usb stick and can clone a system disk (c:). Because they are not running off the disk being cloned they can copy a Windows system. A Windows licence is typically linked to some kind of motherboard hardware identifier but not the disk itself so cloning is perfectly possible.

[Clive Brown 1]

On Clive Brown 1 Said:

[…] but it’s not “as good as ever”. Critical failure is a possibility.

Apologies for being flippant, Clive

I am 76 years old, and have had that vaio for more than half my life

Critical failure is always a possibility … vita brevis

MichaelG.

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The main point of this topic was to share the irony of those two error messages

[John HaineParticipant @johnhaine32865]

I was at a talk a long time back on UI design which was replete with examples of poor practice, many of them by Microsoft.  The one I particularly remember had a warning message and a couple of “buttons” to push.
<p style=”text-align: center;”>Your hard disc has crashed and you will lose all your files.</p>
<p style=”text-align: center;”>OK                          Cancel </p>

[John HaineParticipant @johnhaine32865]

Well, so much for this sites formatting….

[george baker 1Participant @georgebaker1]

Hi

I used to Like

 

No Keyboard attached   Press F1 to continue

 

George

[Robert Atkinson 2Participant @robertatkinson2]

Clonezilla live is a good copy tool. You need a PC that will boot from a CD-ROM or USB stick. It runs on a small version of Linux (no it doesn’t install anything on your PC). You also need a IDE to USB adaptor. I use external HDD enclosures rather than the just a lead as they protect the drive and seem more reliable. They are so low cost I don’t even remove the HDD from them and archive it away.
For an SSD I use mSATA modules with an adaptor that’s the same size as a 2.5″ drive. I just ordered these to replace the HDD in a piece of electronic test equipment that has a PC embedded in it (R&S CMU200).

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/167606796572
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/177020366254
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/363196049018

Total cost under £22.

Robert.

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