A older friend of mine stopped me in church a few weeks ago.  He said their granddaughter’s laptop was broken.    It starts up and it just beeps. The laptop isn’t a big deal, but the files on there are — it’s all of her files for her graduate degree.

I know these people well, and I know they don’t know much about technology.  I don’t know their granddaughter at all, but since she has no backup I assume that she’s not real savvy.  I really don’t like doing these things, but it’s for a friend and I understand the hardship this can create.  I also understand how much a repair shop would charge for this, and it wasn’t going to be pretty.

My guess was a virus finally destroyed the boot record, or some DLL and now refused to boot.  My idea was to boot from a CD, find the files,  copy them, and call it done.  However, it had been a while since I have done any search-and-rescue operations, so I started looking for the latest tools — meaning,  a Linux CD to boot with and to move those files off.  My choice, however, didn’t actually matter.

I got the laptop a couple of days later and verified that nothing came up on the screen.  And by nothing, I mean the light of the display as well.  “Odd,” I thought. I looked at the case and noticed that it was horribly cracked around the hinge of the screen. That means that it wasn’t an OS problem — the screen was broken.  A call to the granddaughter confirmed it, “Yeah, I dropped it a few times.”  My advice: “Don’t do that!”

So this is a bit of a different animal, but didn’t seem so hard. I hooked it up to a monitor, thinking that the VGA port would still work. Nope, no luck. No amount of switching the input would help it.  I guess all those drops ruined the port as well.

Now I was back to square one. I mucked around with moving the screen and could, as some points, get the screen light up so I could see the login screen. It may have only lasted a second, but at least it lasted.  After some toying around, I figured out if I left the laptop on the floor and moved the screen back as far as I could, I could see it well enough to log in.  After that, my plan was to install TightVNC, log in remote, and copy the files.

This was thwarted by the simple fact that Windows Vista couldn’t find my wireless network! No kidding!  It never ever listed it!  Maybe it was from the position the laptop was in, but I couldn’t move that because I knew I could see the screen consistently while sitting there. I then realized that this laptop had a CD burner on it. I got a blank CD, slipped it in, and burned a copy of the My Documents folder.  I barely had enough room but I got them all.

But then, of course, my MacBook Pro refused to read the CD!  So I went to the Linux box  I have and it could read the CD well  enough.  Then I uploaded the files to my Dropbox account, shared the folder with owner, and then I was done.

I occasionally ask how to completely wipe a hard drive.  Usually someone is selling their PC, giving their old one away, etc., and know all the risks of leaving bits of their identity on their hard disk.    I have been telling people where to get a basic security CD that runs Linux and run scrub, but that can take a long time (someone told me it took the better part of a weekend on their old laptop!).  I ran into Darik’s Boot And Nuke (DBAN) recently and that may be what I suggest from now on.

From their website:

Darik’s Boot and Nuke (“DBAN”) is a self-contained boot disk that securely wipes the hard disks of most computers. DBAN will automatically and completely delete the contents of any hard disk that it can detect, which makes it an appropriate utility for bulk or emergency data destruction.

Why DBAN?  It seems faster, has more methods, and has a nice little package to install everything. If you still aren’t trusting, then simply smash your drive with a hammer — sounds strange, but it will work.

I found this post at LifeHacker to be a good list of stabilizing Windows.  I knew somethings already, but some of the items were surprising to me.  The list tries to prove, or disprove, any misconceptions you may have.  Some of my thoughts:

• Who knew that Microsoft Security Essentials was really that good? I would have never thought that.
• I agree with being very careful with Admin rights and only use them when you need to.  Nothing else gives you more security headaches than some malware installed as Admin.
• Revo is a good thing!  Most Uninstallers leave lots of stuff behind.
• I’m glad to know that defragging is finally going away in the Windows 7/Vista world and beyond.  It’s been around too long.

Maintenance on your PC is something you need to do,  just like you need to do dishes, take out the garbage, etc.  Do it regularly, before things start smelling, er, crashing.