Tuesday, November 25, 2008

PC Troubles

All I can say is thank goodness I was a believer in backing up everything a long time ago. Last night, my primary photoshop PC decided I could no longer log in, giving me an error "Unable able to log user in, domain ______ is unavailable" Of course, this is a standalone PC that doesn't log into a domain, but that doesn't appear to matter. After several attempts to boot into safe mode, I'm still unable to log in and access my data.

So, after hours of scouring the internet, it looks like I have 1 option, reload the O/S. The general consensus is that some sort of virus has corrupted my network configuration and the O/S now thinks I'm supposed to be on a domain, even though the PC isn't configured for one.

I have everything backed up, twice. My primary data source is on a fully mirrored RAID 1 (2 500GB SATA drives). And I have an external USB drive that I periodically backup all drive on my mirror to. So I have my data, I know its there, but now I'm going to have to spend a night reloading and reconfiguring my PC so I can access that data again. What a pain.

However, at least I can rest easy knowing I haven't lost any data, just time.

Remember, AWLAYS keep backups of your data, you never know when hardware will go wrong!