Advice needed on computers/laptops (37)

I take it you are in export/import? no I am only kidding,then she should get one closer to home but depending on how much she is going to put in there moneywise and if this gent has not charged her too much it might be wise to get a second opinion, or a mutt computer.
ohhh and yes you are right it would be illegal didn't think that once you could no longer use it on one, well anyway I get the gist, very knowing you are of this stuff, impressed weather you want me to be or not, just my opinion.R

First of all, thank you so much to everyone for taking the time to reply to this thread. I read thru all the replies, and found them very useful. I think I will definitely get laptop local. Much handier if things go wrong etc. The technician rang me back today. I only got message he left on answer phone yesterday. Apart from getting new motherboard, and because mine was such an old one, he said it wasnt possible to repair it. If he replaced it, he would also have to replace USB ports etc. So cost would rise. Only cost me 25 euro to get it looked at. DreamAngel - I know the computer shop you are talking about. The one up the side of the shopping centre? I dont like the bloke who works there. He is real ignorant. I got my desktop put together by The Computer Centre which was just across the road from there, before it shut down. As I said in earlier post, they screwed me. My dad got his laptop in Grays TV shop across from train station. It was around 800 3 years ago. Its good enough laptop - Toshiba - but dead slow! Going to go into Kilkenny 2moro and have a look around. Will try electrocity too.

Does anyone know if the motherboard is shot, is there any way to get files saved on to memory stick? Or is that just wishful thinking? I forgot to ask the technician when he was on phone.

If you cannot bring up windows which is the program holding your pics and all/etc then no not unless you take your hard drive to a forensic specialist which can then scan it unlike your computer guy there.I would suggest though that you get an online account and there are free ones with a picture holder, if you need one I will suggest one by looking it up but there are places that you can keep your photos free and your info free that have a much more safer place to store them than you do, like I store mine in yahoo mail, all I do is go there and click what folder then my pics come up with a few commands, there servers of course are a lot more trusty than our servers and our harddrives and that includes disks which can get dammaged in all kinds of ways.

Have heard about the places where you can store photos. But its not just photos. I do a lot of writing, and all my stories are now lost. Only have a couple printed out. And yes, I am a complete thicko. I never backed up! I wont make that mistake again.

Yes a computer shop should be able to copy your files from your old hard drive and save them to removable storage i hve seen this done but cant do it myself unfortuntely

Even with the motherboard banjaxed? I had thought I had heard that the memory is seperate, but not sure! And I used to know so much about computers - when DOS was operating system. LOL!

I dont know too much about comp's but i do know you can remove the hard drive and put it into another machine or copy the files from the hard drive to another computer by placing the hard drive in an external device so maybe you should ask about that when you go shopping in kilkenny tomorrow hope this helps

Thanks Snagglepuss, Will definitely ask around. Would be great if I could save my stuff. The comp can be replaced, but the rest cant!

Bless your heart I know what you mean to some degree, I too write some and I lost all of mine including songs and manuscripts so I do know somewhat, I have since then stored my goods with yahoo mail it has the best servers.just an opinion.