computer lost connection with .dll

[joholste]

so yesterday when the comcast guy came to hook up my internet, i pushed the power button and immediately got the message that my computer could not access the dynamic link library. naturally that pissed me off as i had just bought it in october and it was the top of the line product when i bought it, now it's not... anyways i call up HP to ask their help because i couldn't find any recovery disks in my paperwork... and they convientley told me that HP doesn't make recovery disks now unless you specifically request them and they cost you extra money, instead they put them up as a file on the D:/ drive. My only thought is that is absolutely the most stupid thing i've ever heard, because a CD takes a lot more to get corrupted than a file on a computer. so what happens when as happened with me the file gets corrupted and you can't boot it... oh that's right it doesn't work, so as i'm sitting there trying to explain to the tech support person who sounds like she's from India, i realize that she is literally reading from a list of things to do when someone calls in and has absolutely no clue that a computer can't function if it can't access it's .dll. so i ask to speak to her manager and maybe he can help me. he told me that there was nothing he could do since i couldn't get it to boot, however he would be glad to take my order for CDs which i think they should have sent them to me free of charge since they're mistake made it so that i couldn't recover my computer. I ended up taking my computer to the nearest Circuit City, and they replaced the hard drive free of charge, but i lost all information that i had on the computer except for what i had on my slave hard drive

[joatmon]

I hate disk failures Did they keep your original disk?

[mcgusto82]

Quote, originally posted by joholste » i lost all information that i had on the computer except for what i had on my slave hard drive smart man. always have a slave drive with my personal files doubled. that and media files.

[northvibe]

Ok so Ill explain some stuff....and well I hope it makes sense.ah HP, well they used to have restore cd's back in the GOOD days. Then they just had this "bright" idea of putting the restore on a hidden bootable partition on the hard drive... HORRID IDEA. I worked at a shop that did HP warranty work and hp was supposed to supply us with a restore for every hp, but of course they didnt so we were in a position just like you were. AND when we would do warranty work and have the hard drive replaced it would come BLANK no restore partition and if we didnt have the restore discs we could do anything!! Dell and HP both are now not shipping discs with computers and when u order the pc you have to say you want the discs sent or you WONT get them and have to pay if you want them afterward.as for your pc. if you had a windows xp disc or could aquire a friends you can run a repair option that could of bandaged up the dll issue (maybe) and got it working again. As for CC did they put a new hard drive in or did they just reinstall windows? if they got you a new hard drive it might of been not needed, sounds like windows just needed to be reinstalled. legally they can only keep the original hard drive if its under warranty and then it would have to be shipped back to the manf. If it was not under warranty and a hard drive was replaced its illegal for them to keep it, just like car parts, the customer is entitled to the bad part.heres the thing if they had a working windows or mac computer they could of plugged your windows hdd into that and pulled the data off, of course they would of charged you data back up but if its important then i suppose its worth it. Backing up is the best thing you can do to you pc !

[joholste]

it appears as though CC just reinstalled the hard drive, but it doesn't have anything that came with the computer, much less my Maya 7.0, or my Photoshop CS2 both of which's CD's i left at my parents house when i moved out to DC *STUPID STUPID*.... and northvibe i hear that Compaq is starting to get into the craze for the recovery drive rather than CDs as well... all to save a little money. i complained to the better business bureau because of it.

[millster]

Compaq is HP, so I would say yes. They are. At any rate, on the machines equipped with the restore partition, there is a program that will allow you to create a CD (or set of CD's) from the HD partition to allow for HD failure. It should all be detailed in your user's manual.Not trying to belittle your situation, just letting you know.

[joholste]

it's kinda hard to create a boot CD when you can't get the computer to boot and they said that it should have asked if i wanted to make a boot CD when i first got it and i said ummmm nope definitely didn't get a screen requesting one because i'm pretty good about making them if it's advised, now i've already had to place my order for them from HP so they'd better darn well give me good ones or i'm gonna be slightly upset

[northvibe]

well joholste glad you got yor computer fixed, being with out one now days can drive someone to go crazy my roommates dell broke i think like 2 months ago and she just now got the money to get it repaired, but its such a old (3yrs) that the motherboard is a pain to find, ah stupid computers.... anywho. i know new sony's when booted ask if you want to make recovery cds, i forgot if new hp/compaq's do, i think the reason is because you can order them with little custom things online so theres no standard pc model anymore, thus recovery cd might not work for that model as it might have different parts. heres what i do, Norton ghost, take that install it OR boot off the floppy it makes, you can then use your cd/dvd burner to make a bootable image of your hard drive. so i install and update windows and all other apps i want, boot ghost, tell it to make my hard drive a image on a dvd and there i go 1 dvd with my hard drive image.Believe me i think any restore for any pc other than a dell is easy. i think dell makes it hard just to (removed) you off........stupid dell driver cd is such bs it never works!