Had to reformat and reinstall everything.

[Brian37]

So over night, the night before last, my computer suddenly freezes and gives me a blue screen upon reboot asking for "bitlocker recovery key". Never seen that before. So running through all the options it was basically telling me I could only keep my data if I had the "recovery key", it wouldn't let me get on line to find it. I went through every option I could and it kept denying me to get to windows and normalcy. The only other option was to erase and reformat the hard drive but lose all my data. 

I didn't want to pay 100 bucks to some local computer fixer to keep my data. Wasn't that important. Most of my poetry is either on a thumb drive or on 1 of 3 websites. The most important data I had were screen shots of celebrities who conversed with me on social media. So I bit the bullet and did the reformat/reinstall. It took about 2 hours with all the reboots and selecting. But then I had to download my apps like facebook, and Twitter. I even had to reinstall "Malwarebites". Basically from start to full recovery was about 5 or 6 hours with getting frustrated and taking breaks as to not have  heart attack and slam my laptop on the floor.

[arewethereyet]

We have a little shop up the street that can fix anything, I swear they can. And they are not expensive. So happy to know they are there.

Even my boss goes to them now though she has quite a drive from home to get to them...it's worth it!

Small place with a couple guys working there.

Computer issues suck!

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

So over night, the night before last, my computer suddenly freezes and gives me a blue screen upon reboot asking for "bitlocker recovery key". Never seen that before. So running through all the options it was basically telling me I could only keep my data if I had the "recovery key", it wouldn't let me get on line to find it. I went through every option I could and it kept denying me to get to windows and normalcy. The only other option was to erase and reformat the hard drive but lose all my data. 

I didn't want to pay 100 bucks to some local computer fixer to keep my data. Wasn't that important. Most of my poetry is either on a thumb drive or on 1 of 3 websites. The most important data I had were screen shots of celebrities who conversed with me on social media. So I bit the bullet and did the reformat/reinstall. It took about 2 hours with all the reboots and selecting. But then I had to download my apps like facebook, and Twitter. I even had to reinstall "Malwarebites". Basically from start to full recovery was about 5 or 6 hours with getting frustrated and taking breaks as to not have  heart attack and slam my laptop on the floor.

I don’t know for certain what machine Rage Against The Machine was raging against, but I’m pretty sure it was a computer. 

Glad you got it sorted.

Boru

[zebo-the-fat]

I have important stuff backed up on a nas drive and a windoze image from about a month ago (stored on a removable hard drive so safe from virus/malware etc). If it all goes wrong I can reformat and install the image then just update from the nas drive.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I have an easy system. When something goes wrong with my computer, I just yell, ‘Honey, how do I fix this?.

Works every time.

Boru

[Brian37]

I learned computers the hard way, first with towers. Now with laptops, which I railed against having because everything is integrated at first. But now laptops are pretty much self fixing unlike old towers where you would have to load in disks or CD drives. Mine was pretty much reformated and reinstalled online. It did most of the work itself. 

I do know this. I wish I knew what I know now about computers 30 years ago, I could have made a real living fixing them knowing what I know now. But I was so intimidated by the technology back then and felt dumb about everything. I did almost wait until the morning to bring it in to at tech, but I got tired of paying each time and said "fuck it, if it is gone, I'll buy a new one". I got lucky. 

I guess some bug got into a critical part of the startup. But as long as the hard drive and cpu are fine, and it is only a software issue, you can always uninstall and reinstall. Fact is, my computer is running even better than before this happened. It is like having a clean chalkboard with very little writing on it.

[pocaracas]

So over night, the night before last, my computer suddenly freezes and gives me a blue screen upon reboot asking for "bitlocker recovery key".

Did you ever install some sort of hard drive encrypting software... like bitlocker?
Bitlocker is a legit piece of software that M$ integrated into Windows: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/wind...1561aae838

Maybe you or someone with admin rights activated that for the boot drive the day before things went awry and forgot to tell you the code?
It's too late, now, but that could have been an option.

Another option is some malicious code activated it for you and then asked you to pay up (possibly in bitcoins) so "they" could give you the code.
If you feel this is what happened to you, my advice is to, from now on, use a better anti-virus than the one shipped with Windows. The Windows one isn't terrible, it's just not that great.
Don't use Norton, that thing is a virus in itself. Use Kaspersky, Avira, Bitdefender... and can't remember any other decent ones (tbh, I haven't looked into the anti-virus market in a while, so there may be newer/better ones around)

[Brian37]

So over night, the night before last, my computer suddenly freezes and gives me a blue screen upon reboot asking for "bitlocker recovery key".

Did you ever install some sort of hard drive encrypting software... like bitlocker?  
Bitlocker is a legit piece of software that M$ integrated into Windows: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/wind...1561aae838

Maybe you or someone with admin rights activated that for the boot drive the day before things went awry and forgot to tell you the code?
It's too late, now, but that could have been an option.

Another option is some malicious code activated it for you and then asked you to pay up (possibly in bitcoins) so "they" could give you the code.
If you feel this is what happened to you, my advice is to, from now on, use a better anti-virus than the one shipped with Windows. The Windows one isn't terrible, it's just not that great.
Don't use Norton, that thing is a virus in itself. Use Kaspersky, Avira, Bitdefender... and can't remember any other decent ones (tbh, I haven't looked into the anti-virus market in a while, so there may be newer/better ones around)

No, I didn't see any ransomware. I use Malwarebytes. 

I am just pissed because I lost my screenshots of my responses on social media from celebrities. Fortunately I do have printouts, but I do need to frame them.

[pocaracas]

Did you ever install some sort of hard drive encrypting software... like bitlocker?  
Bitlocker is a legit piece of software that M$ integrated into Windows: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/wind...1561aae838

Maybe you or someone with admin rights activated that for the boot drive the day before things went awry and forgot to tell you the code?
It's too late, now, but that could have been an option.

Another option is some malicious code activated it for you and then asked you to pay up (possibly in bitcoins) so "they" could give you the code.
If you feel this is what happened to you, my advice is to, from now on, use a better anti-virus than the one shipped with Windows. The Windows one isn't terrible, it's just not that great.
Don't use Norton, that thing is a virus in itself. Use Kaspersky, Avira, Bitdefender... and can't remember any other decent ones (tbh, I haven't looked into the anti-virus market in a while, so there may be newer/better ones around)

No, I didn't see any ransomware. I use Malwarebytes. 

I am just pissed because I lost my screenshots of my responses on social media from celebrities. Fortunately I do have printouts, but I do need to frame them.

I once lost a few years' worth of college work... luckily, it was past years, so it was fine.
That's when I installed Dropbox and I've been using it since for the important things.
From M$, you have their OneDrive which is similar.
And there's also Google Drive.
And you can use all of them for some extra cloud space, or for redundancy.

[The Valkyrie]

Computers are like people.

If they stop working, hit them with a hammer


Either they'll start working again or they won't and it's time for a new one.

Either way, problem solved!