Well, yesterday,  I went to turn on my laptop and nothing happened except a flashing light on the caps lock key. According to HP, that signals that my CPU up and died. So, I went today and got a new laptop with (spit) Windows 8 and have at least gotten Firefox going and Poser 2012 installed. The new laptop saw my old external so I have access to all my old Poser programs going back to Poser 4. However, anything that I downloaded for Poser 8 and Poser 2012 was--you guessed it, in the HP laptop. I'll be calling someone in town to try to retrieve the data on my HP, but in the meantime, could some kind people point me to some links? I have no Firefox bookmarks from before and I need the latest EZSkin python script definitely, and because this new laptop has a bright and shiny GForce video card in it, I'd like to try that updated Pose2Lux script and link to Luxrender's latest build........more may follow! Thank you all in advance!

Snarly's Space

Sorry about your computer.

Yanno, you can buy an ide/sata to USB cable in a computer shop and get the stuff off of your old hd yourself. You'll have to remove it first tho (the hd should be right under one of the panels on the bottom of the laptop.) ;). We keep one sitting around at all times for just such emergencies. LOL

Good luck :)

Laurie

Attached Link: English Bob's website

Quote - Snarly's Space

Sorry about your computer.

Yanno, you can buy an ide/sata to USB cable in a computer shop and get the stuff off of your old hd yourself. You'll have to remove it first tho (the hd should be right under one of the panels on the bottom of the laptop.) ;). We keep one sitting around at all times for just such emergencies. LOL

Good luck :)

Laurie

Thanks Laurie! I will keep this in mind. I happen to live in a small town on Vancouver Island and we only have 3 choices for electronics: Futureshop, London Drugs, and Staples. I am not sure any of them would have that nifty gadget. I might have to order something like that online. My main problem is that I don't know if it was a virus that killed my HP or just that it up and died, so that's why the call for a techie guy in town.

I'm sure your friendly local data recovery specialist would be delighted to take your money off you, but the CPU getting fritzed doesn't mean the HD is kaput: get one of those gizmos suggested above for a few dollars and you'll probably be able to just copy your data straight off.

Tigerdirect can have one in the mail to you this afternoon. Just go to their website and click the chat icon. They are nice people to deal with.

Quote - Tigerdirect can have one in the mail to you this afternoon. Just go to their website and click the chat icon. They are nice people to deal with.

Yeah, and I know they have an identical company in Canada (so you don't get walloped with fees) :). Those IDE/SATA to USB gizmos are really cheap :).

FWIW, a cpu frying in a laptop is a common thing - they do get really hot. I had one up and die from the same thing myself last year (I'm still in mourning...lol).

Laurie

I'd spend a few dollars more (or perhaps not; I see Tiger has some for $10 US) and buy a SATA drive enclosure (presuming your laptop has a SATA drive; those made in the last 7 or so years do).  Then you can use it as an external drive to keep stuff backed up...

Quote - FWIW, a cpu frying in a laptop is a common thing - they do get really hot. I had one up and die from the same thing myself last year (I'm still in mourning...lol).

Our laptops get a layer of felt built up on the CPU heat exchanger after a while.  The easiest way to deal with it is once a week to blow into the exhaust port (with the machine off ), which blows the junk out the bottom.  If it gets too bad, I have to pop off the keyboard and remove the fan to clean it out...

You can get all of Snarly's scripts here: http://snarlygribbly.org/3d/forum/ 

Pose2Lux site seems to be down, so here's a collection of links:
User manual - http://pose2lux.wikispaces.com/User+Manual
Plugin at the luxrender forums - http://www.luxrender.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=10341
Luxrender - http://www.luxrender.net/en_GB/download 

Staples usually stocks hard drive enclosures. Pull the hard drive out of the old notebook and put in into one. Pull off what you want and the you will have another external drive to use.

Thanks so much for all the suggestions! I do realize it's possible that I might be able to pull my data off that drive myself. However, my concern is that a virus might have killed my CPU. I say this because late at night I read articles on Archaeology. I have a site bookmarked that has weekly links to Archaeology related stories. That night I followed a link to a newspaper article and just as I started to read, I got a big popup saying that I needed to update my Java. My computer had automatically updated Java just two days before so I hit my back button, reloaded the story, read it and then went on to read other articles. Later when I shut down Windows it seemed to take a long time for it to shut down. The next day, it wouldn't turn on. Call me paranoid, but I don't know if I got a virus that then killed my computer, or if it's just HP. I'll never buy another HP laptop again, I've hated it for the two years I had it. Terrible graphics card in it......Anyway, I just want to make sure the computer died a natural death.

I spent a couple of hours redownloading old purchases from Rendo. I had backed up a few of my character creations and I wan in the middle of creating a new V4 Character package for the store......oh well.

I don't see how a virus could kill a CPU, the chances of that are slim at best.

A cpu just up and dying does happen, especially in machines that are not designed to be run hard all the time.

Attached Link: http://www.morphography.uk.vu/links_page.php

Ironsoul is cool. :-)

The personal Poser freebie website is in serious decline, unfortunately, so you may not be able to re-download everything that you can't retrieve off your HDD. Every week I remove more links off that page than I add; and that's not even counting the sites which still exist, but no longer offer relevant stuff.

Best of luck, anyway. I agree with the others that CPU failure is much more likely to be hardware related than it is due to a virus. I suppose I'd better start treating my four year old HP laptop with more respect, since I can't afford to replace it. ;)  

*Quote -*I'll never buy another HP laptop again, I've hated it for the two years I had it. Terrible graphics card in it......Anyway, I just want to make sure the computer died a natural death.

Is is an ENVY?  I fixed one last year for a friend's student that was locking up; clogged CPU heatsink. I got her a little stand at the Dollar store to hold it off the desktop so it would be less likely to happen again

I use only HP laptops, but I use the business models.  I'm typing this on a 8510w, of which we have seven.  Prior to them we had EVO 610c's.  However, I now do my rendering on a 6-core desktop box

Even if it were a virus, which is extremely unlikely, it would be unlikely to affect your installed or zipped content.  However, I'd reinstall any DAZ content using DAZ Install Manager, which is fast and painless...

Quote - The personal Poser freebie website is in serious decline, unfortunately, so you may not be able to re-download everything that you can't retrieve off your HDD. Every week I remove more links off that page than I add; and that's not even counting the sites which still exist, but no longer offer relevant stuff.

Indeed. Some stuff from vanished sites can be found on the Wayback Machine, but if the site uses much Javascript or requires a login, it's gone... :(

It's less likely to be a virus than running the processor at 100% for long periods when rendering :(

Make sure you have a good AV (paid or free) from Norton/Mcaffee/AVG/Avast or any other big player and keep it up to date. You can scan you old HD without triggering any virus activity before installing stuff.

As above, make sure you're not blocking the vents underneath or fan with fluff. Simple stands or stands with fan power are available. They also put the keyboard at a better angle for typing. There are free apps available to monitor the cpu temp and fan speed

I'll say it again. I wish that there was some Community Archive of the shaders that BB has given away. Right now I don't have any of the ones that BB graciously gave us for P9/PP2012.