I’ve been incommunicado for a bit due to yet another computer malfunction. This was a truly bizarre one, and the diagnosis I made, strange and unlikely as I thought it was, turned out to be correct. It’s a reminder that computers can fail in rather odd ways.
TechBackup, Tech SupportMay 04, 2011
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Hey, is this blog still on? It appears that I haven’t updated it in quite a while. The end of session got in the way, then the MSST program started and then we moved to a new place. During the move, I had yet another example of how important it is to back everything up on your computer.
I moved my computer over, plugged everything back in, and turned it on. Windows 7 refused to boot, halting at a blue screen. When I tried to boot into safe mode, I could see that the problem was with a file called CLASSPNP.SYS. I found this thread with a similar problem, but unfortunately replacing the file didn’t help. All the other searches I did turned up people with the same problem, and no solution. Eventually, I had to reinstall Windows to get it working.
Fortunately, though, I had backups of all of my data, and so I didn’t lose anything, most importantly the paper I was working on for class. It did take several hours to reinstall all of my programs and get everything looking right again, but I didn’t have to spend many more hours recreating documents. Remember: always back up your files, and back them up to more than one place!
If you have more than one computer, laptop, or external hard drive, and you want to keep files synchronized between them, one of the best tools out there is SyncBack Freeware. This free utility allows you to set up multiple syncing rules between different drives and network locations, such as full two-way synchronization, pushing data from one drive to another, or pulling data from one drive to another. It has a comprehensive filter system that lets you tweak everything to your heart’s delight, and a scheduler that lets you schedule when you want it to run. I use it not only to synchronize files between my desktop and laptop, but also to backup all of my data to my external hard drive. It’s a fantastic piece of software.
