Max Kane Posted December 16, 2007 Report Share Posted December 16, 2007 Right, Long story short my PC is playing up, in a way that really infuriates me. My driver is nackered & as such I can't burn CDs, playing from CD this is a pain in the arse as I can't burn any new tracks to play. The driver error is a result of the WNASPI file that is needed to load the said driver having somehow been corrupted by a virus, my anti-virus then deleted said file beyond recovery (nice goin eh?) Now the only feasable option I've been presented with is to reboot my system & run the risk of losing all of my tracks which are saved on the hard disc. These tracks number around 380 & take up over 3gig, basically I need a good way to back them up (bear in mind I have no CD burner) which won't take an eternity. Any ideas/thoughts greatly appreciated... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aza Posted December 16, 2007 Report Share Posted December 16, 2007 (edited) Sorry to hear that Tom... How did you manage to pick up an infection - what AV you got? Surely it should analyse EVERYTHING that comes down and scan it, if it don't like it then it deletes it compulory! I have NIS 2008 and everytime I boot up it asks me to run live update and I update at least every other day. This way you should be almost safe from most stuff out there - but as with anything not entirely! Anyhow, CD burning is not a good idea as it then becomes write once, and that disc is no longer good for you. DVD would be ok I suppose, but again write once, disc no good and can't be used again. You seem to be pretty ok with that amount of tracks and thus you could get away with putting all that stuff on a 4 Gb pen drive. You can pick these up for less than £20 now, however I would suggest getting yourself a nice external hard drive, which can be found from good places like Ebuyer.com for £50-£70 for 500 Gb!. I have two drives; one 250 Gb where I keep all media such as pics, vids, and music, and secondly, a 500 Gb which backs up what I have on the other drive. The big plus with these drives is usb 2.0 connectivity thus faster writing speeds for large volumes of data, plus you can write, re-write many times with wasting discs. A format I suppose is your last resort, but providing you BACK UP EVERYTHING, you should be back up and running. Hope this helps and you get this sorted successfully Edited December 16, 2007 by Aza Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JasonB Posted December 16, 2007 Report Share Posted December 16, 2007 What Aza typed I Agree with, proper annoying although Id dont keep even 50 tracks a time on me pcmaybe 20-30ish when igetenough to burn off they burn toff asap. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Max Kane Posted December 16, 2007 Author Report Share Posted December 16, 2007 Cheers lads, considering the external solutions, wanted to create a .zip file & email it to myself but the compression would take forever Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aza Posted December 16, 2007 Report Share Posted December 16, 2007 Zipping wouldn't benefit you really in terms of compression as zipping only compresses what is repetitive data (I think) i.e. in a picture, a shade of green might be predominat and thus the zip could generate code saying use this green once but times seven in these regions when unzipped, or along those lines...), music wouldn't save you any space, unless I guess you want them just into one file? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigsteve Posted December 16, 2007 Report Share Posted December 16, 2007 Sorry to hear about your problems, Tom. However, its reinforced my thoughts that I should really back my files up before somehting happens. I currently have about 10GB of stuff to store externally, but don't know where to start in chosing a good bit of kit. I would like to download and keep more stuff, but I can't afford to go much over £40 really. eBuyer looks good and most stuff seems free delivery, but do brands make any difference? Thanks for any help. (And sorry Tom for hijacking your thread ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Briggsy Posted December 17, 2007 Report Share Posted December 17, 2007 Both options suggested are the best ideas - a 4 gig pen drive for a cheap option, or, for a longer-term investment, an external hard drive is a good option. You never know when a hard drive could go belly up. If you had an external hard drive, you could do a complete clone of your main hard drive by using Norton Ghost too - and it only takes about 20 minutes, that way, if you ever need to complete restore, you'll be able to do so within minutes - and even your settings will be restored. Half of the time, restoring settings and Windows updates can take longer than restoring all of your files. An external hard drive would cure your problem - and also offer the chance to always back up your current hard drive. but do brands make any difference? Thanks for any help. Most of the time, i've found 'cheap' brands to be equally as good (sometimes even better) than big brands. PC equipment is a lot cheaper these days than it was years ago - mainly because its all made in Taiwan and other far flung places. If there's only a few quid difference, its probably more worthwhile buying the bigger brand - but if there's a huge difference, i'd be tempted with the cheaper brand. A couple of years ago, I had the choice of buying a Sony flat screen monitor with a one year guarantee, or an unbranded flat screen monitor with a three year guarantee. The unbranded one was around £80 cheaper - but it's never let me down. If it gets me to the three year mark, then i'm happy. They must have had confidence in their quality to offer a three year guarantee, which is a good sign. No doubt the Sony monitor would have conked out just after the guarantee had expired. I made a wise choice I think Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Judge Mental Posted December 17, 2007 Report Share Posted December 17, 2007 Can only agree with whats been said already, I've got 3 250Gb external hard drives, and have ALL my tunes (in the region of about 150Gb), backed up on 2 of them, plus all my recent stuff saved to my laptop, Ipod, both hard drives, and DVD. Got far too much unreplaceable stuff to take chances with, and for the benefit of it, external hard drives really are cheap as fcuk! Just don't go for the 'cheapest' one, Ebuyer's a good shout if you read the users comments, and is probably the cheapest place you'll find, and the service is brilliant! Good luck anyways, dunno what I'd do if I lost all the stuff I've collected (legally ) over the years! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neuro Posted December 17, 2007 Report Share Posted December 17, 2007 External hard drive for me seems the best solution - you just plug them in and go - then once you are sure you have all your gear on it, you can mess around with your PC to get it back to its original shape Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FuzzY-LogiC Posted December 17, 2007 Report Share Posted December 17, 2007 Agreed. External hard drive is a good thing to have for backup and storage. a 4gb USB pen-drive would be the cheapest solution in this matter though. they cost nothing these days. In terms of brand for the external hard disks, i can only recommend Western Digital (WD), Maxtor and Seagate's ext. solutions. These are the only ones i've really had my hands on for a longer period. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Max Kane Posted December 17, 2007 Author Report Share Posted December 17, 2007 It's really annoying me because it's just the one ASPI file that's missing. I've re-installed my drivers using DirectX but it hasn't rectified anything. If there was some way to basically resolve the ASPI problem I wouldn't need to re-boot or anything. Furthermore an actual version of the file is present in the relevant locations, however the system simpy displays the message 'Original Windows ASPI File Missing' & won't attempt to load nero Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FuzzY-LogiC Posted December 17, 2007 Report Share Posted December 17, 2007 hmm, Tom, i think you should give Imgburn a try. grab it from here: http://www.imgburn.com/index.php?act=download It's freeware and very nice to all sorts of burning... AND... you can change ASPI driver in the 'settings' menu and then 'I/O'. In order to burn a regular data disc (cd/dvd), you chose the 'Build' option in the 'Mode' menu. My point is that you could burn a DVD with the 3gb stuff you need backed up. It might help, it might not. Give it a whirl and let us know Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Max Kane Posted December 17, 2007 Author Report Share Posted December 17, 2007 Thanks for that mate, however I think it's pretty much a lost cause, the windows ASPI file is needed to start any programme off that runs from my main driver. An ASPI file is presrnt & for all intents & purposes is the correct one but for some reason windows & nero don't recognise it. I'm gona try & have a go with your suggestion anyway though mate, thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Max Kane Posted December 17, 2007 Author Report Share Posted December 17, 2007 Tried ImageBurn just now, exact same error messages. 'Need Windows Original WNASPI32.DLL' Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aza Posted December 17, 2007 Report Share Posted December 17, 2007 If you want to be really cool - try amazon'ing, play.com'ing, ebuyer'ing for a passport hard drive. These are about the size of a normal ipod, can hold at least 60 Gb (think you can get around 120 Gb) and are extremely portable. They look cool too Hope this helps as with the rest of the above Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigsteve Posted December 17, 2007 Report Share Posted December 17, 2007 Thanks for all the advice. Once Christmas is out of the way, I'll try my luck in the sales. (In the meantime, cue a hard disk failure :twisted: ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Max Kane Posted December 17, 2007 Author Report Share Posted December 17, 2007 Get in! It may have taken me two hours & maye have involved more than a fair share of choice language but I got the b*stard working. Had to sift thru my entire start-up disc for windows & correlate every driver file but finally found the one I needed to re-load. Peversely it wasn't an ASPI file at all but another driver file that was needed, but hey it's done now & I'm able to burn again. Thanks for all the tips of file back-up, as with Steve I'll be looking into it in the new year Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigsteve Posted December 17, 2007 Report Share Posted December 17, 2007 Well done mate! Glad you got it sorted, and if anything, your woes have kicked-started me into planning for catastrophic failure. All things happen for a reason Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simcut Posted December 18, 2007 Report Share Posted December 18, 2007 Hooray, nice one for fixing it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Judge Mental Posted December 18, 2007 Report Share Posted December 18, 2007 Glad you sorted it mate, but would defo still reccomend external storage regardless! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FuzzY-LogiC Posted December 18, 2007 Report Share Posted December 18, 2007 nice1! Glad to hear you got it fixored... In your case, i would deffy look into an external backup-solution as soon as you have the money. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chrissie Brown Posted December 18, 2007 Report Share Posted December 18, 2007 Well done mate! Glad you got it sorted, and if anything, your woes have kicked-started me into planning for catastrophic failure. All things happen for a reason Couldn't agree more, l've been thinking about getting an external hard drive too as l would be devastated if l lost all my tunes etc. My biggest problem is time, (not enough of it) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moonman Posted December 18, 2007 Report Share Posted December 18, 2007 My biggest problem is time, (not enough of it) "Time is a valuable thing, watch it fly by as the pendulum swings, watch it count down to the end of the day, the clock ticks life away" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Judge Mental Posted December 19, 2007 Report Share Posted December 19, 2007 My biggest problem is time, (not enough of it) Rubbish! A 4Gb transfer on mine takes about 3 mins! Time's only a factor when you have to start from scratch! And thats what you're preventing here Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheSaint Posted December 23, 2007 Report Share Posted December 23, 2007 Its a good thing to know that if you have a problem with Windows Vista, XP or 2000 you can do a 'repair' on just the system files. This wont affect any files which aren't in the %WINDIR% folder. You can do a 'repair' by booting from the system disk. I think this would have fixed your ASPI problem.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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