Why I Love My LJ Family - Thank you, darklotus1211

[teddy_radiator]

A huge shout-out to darklotus1211 for actually being able to recover my lost exchange chapter almost completely. Folks, it was so screwed up it wouldn't even allow me to send her the emailed file - I had to send it as an online file and she was STILL able to get about 90% of it.

Thanks to all who sent me hugs and support and encouragement. And a huge hug to dark for getting it to me. I have learned my lesson, and I'm now saving in about 20 places, just to be on the safe side, but I gotta tell you, darklotus is in my personal hall of fame. Bless you so much, sweetie. You have no idea how much it mean to get this back, especially after the trials I've had with missing/corrupt/dead files. This was a happy ending!

Comments

[darklotus1211.livejournal.com]

Glad I could be of help my dear.

As I said to you earlier - I have my idiot savant moments! :D

[teddyradiator.livejournal.com]

I should be such an idiot! I actually feel ahead of the game now!

Hopefully, I can continue and make this Exchange fic worth all the hassle you went through pulling it back from the brink!

[beffeysue.livejournal.com]

*singing praises and giving thanks for darklotus1211's magical file saving skills*

I am so happy for you! This experience has really made me give a thought to setting up a better way to automatically "save" my work as I work. A friend of mine has a USB hub hooked up to his computer and has two (I think only two) flash drives in it. He wrote a small batch file that runs every so many minutes and copies the contents of one particular folder to first one flash drive and then the other. Perhaps if I ask nicely, he will share the code with me, and I can "automate" my own file-saving strategy. If I ever get that far I'll let you know.

[teddyradiator.livejournal.com]

I am starting to save my work on my external (which I think was the original culprit, my laptop, a CD a memory stick, hard copy... I'm going to keep it one way or another!

[melusin-79.livejournal.com]

i'm very glad to hear to have a guru on hand to sort these kinds of horrors out. You must be so relieved

[teddyradiator.livejournal.com]

I am indeed. This was the second corrupted file I've had in as many weeks. Fortunately I had another copy of the first one, but after the great milk dumping fiasco, I was about to run screaming out the window. Now I actually feel a bit more excited about my Exchange fic in general.

I also acquired an ergonomic keyboard yesterday - whenever I get used to typing on it, I think I'll be formidable!

[m-mcgonagall-65.livejournal.com]

Hooray!

[mimimanderly.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad you don't have to rewrite it; I know how you've been sweating it! Everything is a lesson, and fortunately this one turned out well in the end.

[teddyradiator.livejournal.com]

Yes, thankfully. While I was thinking my file was gone forever, I actually started on the next chapter of the story, so I'm actually a little ahead of the game at this point.

[justpinkpastel.livejournal.com]

Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay!

I'm so happy for you! I'm glad that darklotus1211 was able to help you!

I think everyone who has ever had to write a paper on a deadline knows the woes of losing all their work. It sucks. But I am so glad that you have such wonderful friends that were able to help you out!!

[teddyradiator.livejournal.com]

I am blessed with kind, generous friends, that's for sure!

[teddyradiator.livejournal.com]

That she does! I just couldn't face yet another screwed up file. There were a few paragraphs missing at the end, and that was all. I retyped them, or rewrote them, rather, and its as good as new. Please, oh gods of the ether, don't let this happen anymore!!

[ladystoneheart.livejournal.com]

Hi Teddy, I loved your work on Devi Art :D

[teddyradiator.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much - I am too deviant for deviantArt, as they kicked me out! But I have a lovely home here, and I'm loving every minute of it!

That is a gorgeous userpic, by the way!

[darklotus1211.livejournal.com]

Yes, you've made a good point re the possibility of there being a problem with the installation of Word - it's a pretty common problem unfortunately, particularly with docx files.

I agree - if you can, try uninstalling and reinstalling both - just to be on the safe side.

I have both Word 2007 and Open Office on my computer, and tend to use Open Office more, simply because it's less buggy.

[teddyradiator.livejournal.com]

I'll do anything to prevent this happenning again. Can I just uninstall and install Word, or do I have to uninstall the complete Office 2007? Also, is Open Office a different program? I'm not really up on these things! ;)

[darklotus1211.livejournal.com]

Personally, I'd uninstall the whole thing and reinstall it just to be on the safe side.

Open Office is a really good FREE office suite that's very good, and has most of the features of MS Office - with the added bonus of being very stable. You can store your work in a number of formats, including .doc, although not docx - but if you want to do that, you can just open the file in MS word and do that afterwards.

You can read up on it and download it from here:

http://www.openoffice.org/

Don't download the beta version, better to always use the stable version that's out - 3.3 at the moment, and it will let you know when there's a new stable version out, and will give you the option to update if you want.

You'll be pleasantly surprised at how good it is - and even if you prefer word, it's a damned good backup.

[teddyradiator.livejournal.com]

Will do. I trust you, so I'm off to download OpenOffice!

[darklotus1211.livejournal.com]

Nearly forgot - have you checked your external disk for errors? If you haven't, it may be a good idea. It's pretty easy to do.

If you already know how to do this, my apologies for the instructions, but it's something a lot of people don't know you can do.

Just hit your start menu, and you'll see on the right 'Computer'. (I'm assuming you have Windows7 or Vista - if you have XP, you'll be looking for 'My Computer')

Click that, and then when the window comes up, RIGHT click the icon for your external drive. At the bottom of the popup you'll see Properties - choose that.

A window will come up with several tabs. Choose the TOOLS tab, and one of the options there will be Error Checking.

Click CHECK NOW, and tick BOTH boxes on the little pop up that comes up, then hit Start. It will take a while, but it will check for any errors on the disk, and will attempt to recover any bad sectors if there are any.

You can do this while doing other things on your computer, but it will run better and faster if you don't.

You can error check your C drive too in the same way, but because that's the disk you run windows from, it will come up with a message saying it can't do it now, but you can schedule one to run at the next startup. I usually do this about once a month, and it's a good habit to get into.

It does take a while, though, so it's best to do it when you can leave it running when you're not going to use it - I usually do it overnight - as Windows won't start until the error check has finished.

Just one warning, though -
Whatever you do, don't get impatient and try to turn off the computer to stop it so you can use the computer while this is going on.

My son did that a few times with his, and it was a big pain fixing the MBR (Master Boot Record) to get it up and running again, but if you just let it run it's course, it will be perfectly safe. You just can't try to interrupt it.

This and defragging are also good things to do before you install or after you've uninstalled a large program. I'm afraid I'm often guilty of not doing this, though - but it does make for a better install.

Sometimes a bit of housework on your beastie can do wonders.

I hope those instructions made sense.