[jonworld]

Hi,
I live in the Chicago area, which, as you know, has had its fair share of bad weather and tornadoes recently (one rolled by down the street from me a few hours ago). Some power outages have been coupled with this weather. My computer is not on a UPS, but I have never had any issue with power outages, that is, until now.

Here's the story:
A few days ago, I performed my yearly hard drive formatting and reinstall of Windows (XP Home). This is a routine procedure for me and I have never had any problems with it.

However, as I was reinstalling adobe dreamweaver the day after this, the installer froze midway through. I found this odd because the computer was "clean" and "fresh" and didn't have any junk that would cause an installation error. I figured this was a one-time bug and tried to reinstall. The install didn't let me because it claimed I already had an installation open.

I now thought, "No problem, I can just use system restore to go back before the installation was initiated and reinstall dreamweaver easily" I opened system restore and got a snack while I waited for the computer to restore and reboot. During my snack, my house lost power for less than a minute due to high winds.

I returned to my computer, which had come back on after the blackout. There was a message onscreen about system restore not being able to complete. Expecting another blackout, I decided to hold off on system restore and installing dreamweaver, Besides, I was in no rush to use dreamweaver since I usually use it for school, which already ended.

Since my computer had had a fresh windows reinstall, I decided to waste time changing all my settings back to what they were in the previous windows installation (desktop background, quick launch bar, appearance, system tray, start menu, etc). Afterwards, I shut down my computer.

Later, I restarted my computer to find that many of the settings I had adjusted changed themselves back. I changed the settings again, restarted, and...some settings, once again, didn't take effect. For example, my quick launch bar would go away after restarting, some of my system tray icons set to "always hide" would reappear. Additionally, some of my applications, like internet explorer, would refuse to run, becoming unresponsive when started. Also, my computer was extremely slow and programs seemed to use more CPU than normal.

I know I could reformat my hard drive again, but does anyone know what's going on and an easy way to fix it. Any help would be appreciated. PLEASE...THIS IS SO FRUSTRATING!

[leroys1000]

Your installation probably got corrupted due to the power outage during restore.
I'm surprised it actually booted into windows.
Clean install is the best way to go being as you don't have any new data to lose.

[xgerryx]

A power outage during system restore is not a good thing.

You could have a look for any older restore points and try them if you can, but I think a format and fresh install might end up being the most economical answer.

You might like to wait for a few more opinons before deciding what to do.

[jonworld]

cool...i just reformatted and everything's' fine...thanks!

[oshwyn5]

Now is a good time to stress the benefits of an Uninterruptible Power Supply (Battery Backup System)
In the event of a power failure they give you time to save your data and properly shutdown the computer. It is not good for a computer to have the power suddenly disconnected.
Any data not saved will be lost, anything in ram does not get dumped to the hard drive and you could loose important system files and drivers this way . But worst of all, the read head can crash into the hard drive as everything crashes. This is why they call it a crash. When that happens the magnetic material used to record data on the hard disk can be scraped off leaving permanent damage. Also when the power suddenly fails a surge current can form in transformers causing surges to delicate internal components sometimes killing them but more commonly causing their lifespan to shorten and failure to occur down the road mysteriously or just causing them to become unstable.


Additionally, most UPS now have Automatic Voltage Regulation. What this does is when the voltage sags (lights dim, fans slow, tv picture shrinks) when there is a heavy draw (AC or Refrig kicks in for example) it maintains a steady voltage (drawing from the batteries to make sure that the output to the computer stays stable) so that the hard drive does not slow down (as fans do when the voltage drops). Even a slight slowing of the hard drive can result in data corruption or drive damage.

Personally I have one (A UPS) for each and every computer one for the router and modem, one for each and every modern TV , and a couple small ones for emergency lighting.