Jeremy Bishop35 said:We’re looking at nearly 800 infections out of fewer than 10,000 tests—honestly, if they actually tested all 4 million of us, we'd likely see tens of thousands of cases... The virus isn't harmless, obviously, but about 85% of healthy people will walk right through this with little to no symptoms. Despite that, there's an unnecessary amount of hysteria being manufactured when there just isn't a real need for it.
And I'm sure they're making a mountain out of nothing in Italy too, regardless of the fact that their hospitals are completely overwhelmed and they're losing 600 people a day.
When you strip away all the marketing fluff, installing a software package is essentially just copying its files onto your hard drive, registering specific entries in the registry, and a few other technical formalities that most people don't bother to track. Quite a lot of programs actually arrive without any dedicated installer at all; you simply drag them onto the disk and run them directly.
The real headache arises when you find you can't actually launch them. You see, 64-bit applications utilize a fundamentally different architecture than their 32-bit counterparts, which means a 32-bit version of Windows simply lacks the capacity to read those files and pass them along to the processor for processing. Since the processor itself is 32-bit, it physically cannot accept 64 bits of data into its registers—and those registers are the high-speed memory units within the CPU responsible for all the heavy lifting.
Now, there is a workaround, assuming you have the patience for it. It is highly probable that you could utilize emulators or virtual machines to host a 64-bit version of Windows within your current environment, which would theoretically allow you to execute those 64-bit applications on a 32-bit computer.
Everything you’ve described points toward a faulty SSD; the fact that your diagnostic software is flagging errors and your entire system crashes the moment you attempt an installation on it is quite telling. If you really want to be absolutely certain before making any moves, I’d suggest reinstalling Windows onto your old hard drive and just running things from there for about ten days—if the system remains stable without any more crashes, then you have your answer.
Since you likely still have a valid warranty, your best bet is simply to request a replacement drive and call it a day. It seems to me you’ve already diagnosed the issue yourself, regardless of whether the machine is brand new or if the crashes only seem to happen sporadically.
If you ask me, that sounds perfectly reasonable. Honestly, claiming nine hours of video playback feels a bit like wishful thinking to me. In my experience, gaming tends to drain a battery in an hour or maybe two at most.
It’s also entirely plausible that the recent update is what’s causing the headache. You might want to try going without any updates for about a week just to see if the issue persists. If things stay stable, then go ahead and update; if not, you have your answer. Actually, if I recall correctly, you can't really opt out of updates on macOS at all, can you?
Terry Collins9 said:There isn’t going to be some grand rescue mission led by IT experts here, because frankly, there is nothing on this drive worth the effort. I suppose I only posted the question in the first place hoping someone might offer a glimmer of hope regarding a recovery attempt.
It just dawned on me, in a rather inconvenient moment of clarity, that I actually have a partition labeled "Music" on that very same disk...
So, it’s headed straight for the trash bin. Take care.
electricsurfer47 said:if the drive isn't spinning, then it simply isn't working, and there is no way to perform any kind of data recovery until that hardware is actually fixed. It is most likely a failure in the control board, and in those cases, a specialized recovery firm—something along the lines of DriveSavers—could theoretically swap out the electronics, though I have heard whispers that with modern drives, that particular workaround is becoming increasingly impossible. If you could successfully swap the board, the drive would ideally function as if nothing had ever gone wrong. However, the real nightmare begins when you are trying to recover data that has been deleted or reformatted, as the fragments can become incredibly scattered and nearly impossible to reconstruct.
It is rarely that straightforward, truth be told. I once had a drive that suddenly sprang back to life, and I was even bold enough to install some massive software suites on it, only for it to go completely dark again the very next day. You never truly know where you stand, but I suppose it might be worth a shot if you are hoping to salvage something precious.
As for the mention of "electronics," that feels like a rather broad and imprecise diagnosis to me. At the end of the day, a Seagate is an electronic component, and there isn't much else to fail besides its own circuitry.
Physical recovery of a Seagate is an expensive endeavor, and unless the data sitting on those platters is absolutely vital, the cost usually outweighs the value. Typically, when these professional recoveries take place, they are essentially swapping out the read/write heads repeatedly until they finally manage to get a clean read from the disk.
I ran into that exact same issue with a brand-new drive, only to discover it was simply a dud right out of the box. As for getting your data back, I'm honestly stumped; perhaps there is some sort of recovery software you could boot from a CD or a thumb drive to try and salvage things.
So, you’re a high school graduate, supposedly heading off to study computer science, yet after four years of schooling, you can't even manage to add two numbers together when they're sitting in different bases—which, mind you, is foundational stuff covered in the very first year of freshman year. It is truly remarkable, quite frankly.
The solution is simple: just convert the numbers into the same base and then perform the addition. There you have it.
The internet is absolutely overflowing with tutorials, video lessons, blogs, and an endless supply of literature regarding number systems. These are the fundamental building blocks, and honestly, any standard American high school computer science textbook covers them in detail.
Daniel Murphy14 said:Something seems off with the link; it says: file not found second 😢
There is actually a more seamless way to handle this via automatic installation. If you head into your "Preferences", navigate over to "Privacy & Security", and then just scroll down until you find the option to "Allow Firefox to install and run Studies", you should be all set, as that ought to trigger the update automatically. Once that is sorted, I simply went ahead and reinstalled Adblock Plus—which is my personal preference, though you can certainly stick with whichever extension you prefer—and that should pretty much wrap things up.
My ad-blocker for Mozilla has completely stopped working, leaving me staring at ads even while I'm just browsing this forum. It seems highly probable that this is tied to this specific development: Lately, it appears that all add-ons within Firefox were disabled. This is a bug on Firefox's end and Has affected All add-ons ; including Ghostery. A patch, specifically version 66.0.4, should be released by Mozilla shortly to rectify the situation. If you'd like to ensure you're back up and running the moment it drops, I'd suggest going into your settings and making sure Firefox is set to auto-update. Should you find yourself needing further clarification, feel free to drop an email to support@ghostery.com. Thanks!
Maria James11 said:How exactly? If you aren't willing to walk me through it, then I'm completely in the dark here.
Well, there are honestly millions of tutorials floating around the internet, and if you check Vimeo, you'll find just as many videos providing step-by-step guidance. You could simply print out a guide and get to work. You'll just need a DVD or a USB drive with macOS on it, along with the necessary drivers for your laptop. Once you purchase macOS, you can just download the drivers directly from the Dell website.
I would suggest pulling one stick of RAM out and just observing how the system behaves for a few days. Once you've done that, swap it for the other one and see if the issue persists; it’s a simple enough way to rule out a faulty RAM module once and for all.
The second thing to consider is your warranty. If you're still covered, I'd say go ahead and file a claim. In America, people often hesitate to return products because they don't want to be an inconvenience to someone else, but that's a bit misguided. You paid full price for a working device, and it is quite literally their job to provide you with one that functions correctly. These companies have service departments specifically for this purpose, it's all part of the warranty agreement, and frankly, it doesn't cost them a dime to make things right.
Look, I don't have a definitive answer to whatever issue you're facing, but I did go through something remarkably similar once.
My Windows system used to crash completely at random, without any discernible pattern—it happened daily, month after month, just an endless cycle of instability. Eventually, I decided to run some memory tests to see if I could find the culprit, and one afternoon, the software flagged a massive amount of errors. Since I was running two sticks of RAM, my plan was simple: pull them out one by one, test each individually to identify the faulty module, and then just toss the bad one in the trash. But here’s the kicker—when I tested them separately, they passed perfectly fine, yet when I put them both back in together and ran the scan again, suddenly everything looked flawless.
So, essentially, I didn't actually fix anything, nor did I actually find the source of the trouble. However, since that little mystery occurred, my Windows hasn't crashed a single time, and it's been nearly a year now. You'll have to be the judge of that. Perhaps one stick wasn't seated quite right in the slot, or maybe it was some other minor physical quirk; I haven't the slightest clue, but the problem simply vanished.
If I were you, I'd try switching the memory slots around, or perhaps just leave one stick out for a few days to see if the stability improves. If that doesn't work, swap it for the other one. Ultimately, if the hardware is still under warranty, you might just want to take it back to Best Buy and file a claim.
For some inexplicable reason, I find myself still clinging to an ancient 60GB hard drive, and if memory serves, I even went out and bought one of those little adapters a few years back just so I could plug it into a USB port as an external drive. When I finally make it home later, I intend to toss the whole lot straight into the trash bin.
It really doesn't matter if the drive is brand new out of the box; it could easily be a dud right from the start. I actually ended up returning a whole new laptop myself just because it came with a faulty drive.
You should probably run some diagnostics with a utility program to check the read speeds, look for bad sectors, and see what else might be going on under the hood. At the end of the day, you’ve got a multi-year warranty on the hardware, so there isn't much to lose. If it dies on you, just file a claim.
Excuse me? Honestly, guys, isn't that a little bit unsettling?
Regarding the monitor issue, you might want to try hooking up a different screen—perhaps just grab a spare from a friend's place—to see if that clears things up. If you didn't build this rig yourself and bought it as a pre-built system, my advice is to take it straight back to the retailer and file a warranty claim immediately. If it turns out to be some minor glitch, they'll figure it out in a heartbeat, but if there's a more significant hardware fault, that's entirely on them to fix.
Amy Vaughn12 said:It’s not actually that expensive. $100 For an average user, 120GB should be plenty, and if you ask me, you'll definitely notice the speed difference. As far as those requirements go, I don't think you really need 16GB of RAM at all. If you just swap in a 120GB SSD into the build my buddy put together, you'll probably have a solid system that lasts you for several years.
If we're talking about gaming, then we aren't exactly talking about an "average user" anymore. I personally run a 120GB drive, which leaves just enough room for the operating system and one single game—Deus Ex, if my memory serves me right, takes up about 80 GB. Once that's on there, you're out of luck for anything else, like Fallout 4. It isn't necessarily a bad setup, though; Windows boots up in a matter of seconds, and you're ready to jump straight into the action.