🚀 go-pugleaf

Thanks to everyone who responded to my posting about the Mitsubishi PC. Here's
the rest of the story:

I'm a software support person for a university that deems campus beautification
more important than hiring instructors to fill vacant positions.  I'm
responsible for about 1500 MS-DOS compatible PCs on campus.  I only have so
much time in the day to preach backup theology.  I've got the software set up
for a "mandatory" daily backup which fails when they learn what "Abort, Retry,
Fail?" means.

I was operating with the information that they had given me and I knew that I
couldn't get over there to check the situation out for about a day.

They have a Mitsubishi monitor with an Intel PC.  I asked what kind of computer
they had and they told me the monitor manufacturer ... I should've known not to
assume ...

They hadn't been backing their machine up, but the software company will
download all they need via modem.  Evidently they didn't have any important
data stored on the machine.

Their hard drive head crashed in such a way that it began cutting grooves into
the disk itself.  They ran some extensive tests on it and effectively ruined
the whole hard drive instead of just the boot sectors.  Sounds like fingernails
on a black-board when it's spinning.

While they were running the tests, they fiddled with the CMOS settings and
hence the computer wouldn't recognize the hard drive.  Which resulted in not
being able to run Norton Utils on it.

At one point early in in the conversation, I asked if they had had any power
surges that might've messed things up, and they said yes, but it didn't matter
because when they happened, the PC wasn't on (but it was plugged in).  Two
things come to mind:  1)  Is there a correlation between the PC not being up
and the power surges?  2)  I've seen powered-down components, including
computers, get fried by power spikes right through surge protectors, don't they
understand electricity well enough to know that this type of thing happens?

They're ordering a new hard drive.  I got the contradictory impression that
they desperately needed the computer to run the power plant, but it didn't
mattter that they might have to wait a couple of weeks for funding and shipping
of another hard disk.  Do they run it manually?  I didn't ask, I was kind of
frightened by the whole thing.

Thanks again,  --jim