Coping with Digital Disasters

November 27, 2009 - 10:45 am

Computers wait for the most inconvenient moment in which to break. Worry not, we’ve got the best ways of dealing with some of the most common computing mishaps.

Spillage

Such a mishap is no fault of the computer. Coffee cups wait until they’re full before jumping out in front of you, which is never good. It’s especially bad when the end result is your caffeine fix seeping between the keys of your keyboard. The same applies to tea, juice and smoothies or if you have a particularly liberal working environment, wine and beer.

As soon as you’ve had a little… accident… stop the spill from spreading by quickly mopping up what you can. Then, shut down your computer – avoid using the keyboard if you can – and unplug the keyboard.

Now for the crazy part, which you do at your own risk, people… head for the sink with your keyboard, and give it a good rinse. Yes, that’s right. Here’s our reasoning: It’s wet already, so a bit more wet can’t hurt, but what can cause problems is the sticky residue that gets left behind. That’ll leave you with keys that don’t work or get stuck, so washing it all away it your best chance at getting your keyboard up and running again.

Once you’ve rinsed your keyboard, place it upside-down somewhere warm – near a radiator perhaps. The quicker it dries out the better, but make sure it’s properly dried out before trying to use it again.

It’s not a guaranteed fix, but it’s worth a shot. Of course, while you wait for the keyboard to dry, you’ll need to find a spare one to use anyway. Oh, and we don’t recommend this method for laptops!

The best fix for spillages: Keep liquids away from computers, especially laptops!

Reboot loop

A bit like a car, some days computers simply don’t want to start. But cars don’t tend to get stuck in loop whereby the start, stop, then start again… then stop again…

Computers have got that one covered pretty well, however. The most common cause of a boot loop is something on the system that’s changed. Is a new or unusual piece of hardware plugged in? Make sure you’ve not got a USB flash drive plugged in or a CD in the drive – there might be something on them that’s giving the boot process some grief. Lastly, was anything new installed when the system was last working?

If there’s no simple physical reason for the problem, the Operating System will often detect that it’s failing to start and give you some options to help get things going. For Microsoft Windows, the “last best good configuration”, e.g. the last settings that were known to work, is a good option to try. If that doesn’t work, safe mode is worth a try. In safe mode, most devices and programs are turned off to try to avoid triggering whatever error there might be. Once you’re booted into safe mode, it’s then possible to have a poke around and figure out what might have caused it.

If that doesn’t work, booting from the original installation CD might give you some recovery options. However, what those options are depends on what your PC supplier has given you, and sometimes the only option they give is a complete wipe and reinstall, which is bad news for your programs and data, so before embarking on such a mission, seek some assistance from a tech savvy individual!

Delete… oops!

The amazing thing about computers is that they can take hours or even days worth of work and erase it in mere milliseconds. Firstly, allow us to direct you to our helpful piece on making backups, because having a copy of a file is the best way to mitigate clumsy use of the delete button!

How can one key cause so much destruction?

If, as is too often the case, there isn’t a good enough backup, there are a couple of options. Firstly, check the obvious… is it in the recycle bin? If it is, restore it and do a little happy dance – but don’t get too cocky, you might not be so lucky next time!

If your file isn’t in the recycle bin, it might not be gone for good. The reason computers can delete things so quickly is that they don’t really delete them, but simply mark the space used by a file as available for use. So, as long as nothing else uses that space, it can be possible to “undelete” a file. Recuva is a free file recovery tool that attempts to do just that. Your mileage may vary, but it’s worth a shot.

A note caution, however – if that file was really rather valuable and needs recovering whatever the cost, it’s best not to try too much yourself – your actions could inadvertently overwrite the space where the file once was and make it much harder to recover, if at all. So if it’s a really important file, seek professional help.

Turn back time

None of our tips are endorsed by Cher, but we wish this one was. This tip is something of a blanket one, covering quite a few of those “damn, why did I change that?” moments. If you’ve managed – as we all have at some point – to change a setting you weren’t quite familiar with, or uninstalled something you shouldn’t, and now things are broken, then there might be a way to undo your ill conceived actions.

Computers can bend time at their will... almost.

In Windows, there’s a System Restore utility. System Restore is tasked with keeping an eye on programs and settings, taking snapshots of changes that are made. These snapshots take place every so often and can also be triggered by major system changes. So, if things have gone awry, fire up system restore and try winding back the clock to a snapshot taken before you did bad.

For Mac users, Apple has created the Time Machine. Once setup, Time Machine takes hourly backups of all changes made to everything on your Mac. So in theory you can undo almost anything you do (and that includes deleting documents accidentally). If you’re reading this page before something goes wrong, then we recommend that you investigate Time Machine and get it setup!

That’s a few digital disasters dealt with, but the list is never ending, so if you’ve got any tips, let us know by leaving a comment!