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Help - desktop not accessible and FTM 2011 has stopped working

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  • Help - desktop not accessible and FTM 2011 has stopped working

    I hope one of you computer experts can help and that, fingers crossed, this isn't catastrophic.
    I was happily using my PC (Windows 8) this afternoon with FTM 2011 open. Then there was a sudden, only momentary, power cut. My screen came back virtually immediately, but the mouse wasn't functioning. Tried ctrl-alt-del to close down but couldn't, so had no option but to switch off the power to restart. I did this, logged in again and carried on working as previously, saving various docs to my desktop temporarily, prior to moving them to the appropriate directory later. So the desktop was still ok at this point. I did notice that the FTM tab wasn't visible at the bottom of my screen but knew I had not been able to close it down properly. I decided to have a break, so used the power settings to put the computer to sleep and when I restarted, noticed that the files I had saved to the desktop weren't showing. To cut a long story short, when I click on the desktop tile in Windows 8, I now get a pop-up saying "c:\users\home\desktop is not accessible. The file or directory is corrupted or unreadable."

    Any advice as to how I can restore access?


    Secondly, when I now try to open FTM 2011 I get a dialogue box saying "A problem caused the program to stop working correctly. Windows will close the program and notify you if a solution is available."

    Needless to say, I haven't received any notification of a solution...
    There's a whole host of other issues now, but hopefully these will be resolved if I can restore access to my desktop.
    Feeling pretty panicky and desperate at the moment so really hoping there is a solution on offer.
    Thanks.
    Christine

    Researching:
    HOEY (Fermanagh, other Ulster counties and Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada) BANNIGAN and FOX (Ballyshannon, Donegal, Ireland and Portland, Maine, USA) REYNOLDS, McSHEA, PATTERSON and GOAN (Corker and Creevy, Ballyshannon, Donegal, Ireland) DYER (Belfast and Ballymacarrett) SLEVIN and TIMONEY (Fermanagh) BARNETT (Ballagh, Tyrone and Strangford, Down)

  • #2
    been googling says this for the desktop

    Its an old problem, when you save to the desktop and it does not show, then right click on the Desktop and click Refresh and the files should then appear.

    Comment


    • #3
      Originally posted by Val wish Id never started View Post
      been googling says this for the desktop

      Its an old problem, when you save to the desktop and it does not show, then right click on the Desktop and click Refresh and the files should then appear.
      Thanks Val.
      I'm going to hold off doing anything at the moment as I have an early start tomorrow and will be out all day. I've been doing lots of googling around this too and have seen various options around resetting, refreshing and restoring...prefer to wait and see if I get any further specific advice via this thread.
      Just in case this is relevant: when I click on My Computer I can still see all my folders and files, but if for example, I try to open a Word document, I get a pop-up saying the file is locked/in use by another user. Might this mean that when I restarted the PC it logged me in as a different user - and if I can get back to my usual user login, everything might be hunky dory again? If so, how can I do that?
      Sorry - not a techie so possibly not explaining this very well!
      Researching:
      HOEY (Fermanagh, other Ulster counties and Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada) BANNIGAN and FOX (Ballyshannon, Donegal, Ireland and Portland, Maine, USA) REYNOLDS, McSHEA, PATTERSON and GOAN (Corker and Creevy, Ballyshannon, Donegal, Ireland) DYER (Belfast and Ballymacarrett) SLEVIN and TIMONEY (Fermanagh) BARNETT (Ballagh, Tyrone and Strangford, Down)

      Comment


      • #4
        Given the number of problems you have mentioned I speculate that the drive was running at the moment of power outage and corrupted some files. Possibly the Windows Registry. Unless you have changed it system restore is automatically enabled in Windows 8 so you might be able to recover by going back to a recent restore point. The link below leads to a microsoft page regarding recovery.

        Learn how to refresh your Windows 8.1 PC without deleting any of your personal files, reset it to its original condition, or restore it to an earlier point in time.


        Part way down the page you will see a link '> Restoring your Pc to an earlier point in time'
        If you click it then a set of instructions will appear telling you how to use system restore.

        If this fails then there are more drastic recovery operations availble, also described on that page.

        David

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by DavidNewton View Post
          Given the number of problems you have mentioned I speculate that the drive was running at the moment of power outage and corrupted some files. Possibly the Windows Registry. Unless you have changed it system restore is automatically enabled in Windows 8 so you might be able to recover by going back to a recent restore point. The link below leads to a microsoft page regarding recovery.

          Learn how to refresh your Windows 8.1 PC without deleting any of your personal files, reset it to its original condition, or restore it to an earlier point in time.


          Part way down the page you will see a link '> Restoring your Pc to an earlier point in time'
          If you click it then a set of instructions will appear telling you how to use system restore.

          If this fails then there are more drastic recovery operations availble, also described on that page.

          David
          David,
          Thanks so much - the system restore option worked! What a relief. Glad I hung fire until I got in from work today and saw your reply. I had found the page you hyperlinked above but it's always reassuring to get advice from a human being as I was debating between the refresh or restore options.
          Correct me if I'm wrong, but if I'd refreshed, I would have lost everything other that what was installed on my PC when I got it - so for me that would have meant losing Microsoft Office which I installed from a website as part of staff benefits in my previous job, plus FTM which I installed from disc.
          As you can imagine, this experience scared the life out of me and made me realise I need to be far more disciplined about backing up. I'd be grateful for any advice you might have re (free?) cloud storage and/or other recommended backup options.

          Thanks again,
          Christine
          Researching:
          HOEY (Fermanagh, other Ulster counties and Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada) BANNIGAN and FOX (Ballyshannon, Donegal, Ireland and Portland, Maine, USA) REYNOLDS, McSHEA, PATTERSON and GOAN (Corker and Creevy, Ballyshannon, Donegal, Ireland) DYER (Belfast and Ballymacarrett) SLEVIN and TIMONEY (Fermanagh) BARNETT (Ballagh, Tyrone and Strangford, Down)

          Comment


          • #6
            Originally posted by Karamazov View Post
            David,
            Thanks so much - the system restore option worked! What a relief. Glad I hung fire until I got in from work today and saw your reply. I had found the page you hyperlinked above but it's always reassuring to get advice from a human being as I was debating between the refresh or restore options.
            Correct me if I'm wrong, but if I'd refreshed, I would have lost everything other that what was installed on my PC when I got it - so for me that would have meant losing Microsoft Office which I installed from a website as part of staff benefits in my previous job, plus FTM which I installed from disc.
            As you can imagine, this experience scared the life out of me and made me realise I need to be far more disciplined about backing up. I'd be grateful for any advice you might have re (free?) cloud storage and/or other recommended backup options.

            Thanks again,
            Christine
            You are correct regarding refresh. Basically Windows 8 is reinstalled back to the original install, any apps that you have purchased or downloaded from the Windows store will be restored - or you can simply restore them yourself once you are logged in with the windows online ID. However desktop applications are removed and you would need the original installation media (and possibly serial numbers) the good news is that all your user files are retained. Recovery does much the same but removes the good news about user files and simply deletes the contents of your hard drive before reinstalling windows.

            There are a number of cloud options which provide reasonable amounts of space: Windows OneDrive is built in to windows, Dropbox is an easy to use option, Google drive is another possibility (especially if you have a gmail account).

            Personally.since I use a desktop computer I have two drives and I use the free software AutoVer to continuously make versioned backups of my Documents folder from the main drive to the secondary drive. The backup folder can get quite big and so from time to time I go through it and trim the contents (you can set the software to do this for you but I like to retain control when wholesale deletions are concerned). This system has saved me a number of times when I have changed my mind, for example deleting people from my family history file and wishing I hadn't.

            Comment


            • #7
              Thanks again David.
              Forgive my ignorance, but what do you mean by "versioned backups"?
              When you say you have two drives do you mean you have partitioned your hard drive or you have an external hard drive?
              Getting an external drive is on my to-do list. I'll go to the chap who built my computer as he's very straightforward and helpful, but if you have any tips on external hard drives in the meantime, please feel free to pass them on!
              Christine
              Last edited by Karamazov; 24-10-14, 10:10.
              Researching:
              HOEY (Fermanagh, other Ulster counties and Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada) BANNIGAN and FOX (Ballyshannon, Donegal, Ireland and Portland, Maine, USA) REYNOLDS, McSHEA, PATTERSON and GOAN (Corker and Creevy, Ballyshannon, Donegal, Ireland) DYER (Belfast and Ballymacarrett) SLEVIN and TIMONEY (Fermanagh) BARNETT (Ballagh, Tyrone and Strangford, Down)

              Comment


              • #8
                We have several external hard drives. You can buy them in a computer shop or from Amazon! They just plug into the computer with a USB. Being a control freak I like to 'drag and drop' anything I want to back up. I open two windows one for the computer and one for the hard drive and copy stuff over that way. I'm not into automation!!
                Anne
                Last edited by Anne in Carlisle; 24-10-14, 12:29.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Hi Christine

                  I follow Anne with the multipe drives solution. I actually have a second internal 2Tb hard drive and two external hard drives of 1Tb and 2Tb. These drives are not expensive for the feeling of safety they bring. For most purposes I follow Anne's example of simply copying from one drive to the other although I admit I use synchronizing software run manually to do it. The versioning is reserved for my family history files and in the case of my software simply means that whenever a change is made to the file on the main drive then a time & date stamped copy is made on the secod drive. This is a simple copy not an incremental backup (that is, it includes the whole file not just the changes to the file). In Windows explorer I get this:
                  Smallwood Versions.PNG
                  as you can see I was working on Smallwo0d2014 family tree (in Family Historian) earlier this afternoon and every change is recorded and hence recoverable. !! This is probably a bit of overkill !!

                  David
                  Last edited by DavidNewton; 24-10-14, 15:18.

                  Comment

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