Luckily I suspected such and backed up most of my docs on to the external hard drive yesterday. Spent 3 hours trying to boot up in safe mode. A guy is coming over to see if he can fix. I don’t think its fixable. So I’m going Mac. Laptop prob so I can travel with it. But I need it to do everything a desktop can. Suggestions?
As tempting as the MacBook Air models are, you probably ought to stay with the MacBook Pro. If you can afford the 15" model, so much the better. Get yourself 8GB RAM and a hard drive >= 512GB, order a copy of Parallels Desktop and Win 7 Professional, and you’ll be loaded for bear.
(BTW, I grew up just northeast of you. Props to all the North County-ans!)
But if you move out of the Windows universe to the Mac world, you will have to purchase (and learn) an entire new set of software - not to mention converting all your existing documents.
Personally, I would stay with Windows. But try to avoid Windows 8. (I’ve had nothing but bad experiences with 8.) If you can find a Windows 7 system, go for that.
Mike
Hmmm. Would my Dreamweaver transfer over? And photoshop? Do you know? Anything else I can do without. But those are pricey
If you buy a Windows version of your software, then you can’t run it on a Mac. The same product might or might not be available for the Mac. But, even it was, you would have to purchase a new Mac version (unless the vendor had an unusually generous exchange policy).
It’s true that you can install various emulators that allow a Mac to run Windows programs. But it’s hard to see what advantage they have compared to buying a Windows box in the first place.
Mike
Get a windows 8 computer.
A lot of people recommend sticking with the odd numbered versions of Windows as the even numbered ones all seem to have problems.
The biggest benefit you will have for sticking with Windowa is that most or all of your current software can be reinstalled onto the new computer provided it is running Windows. If you switch operating systems you will n eed to purchase all new software to run on it and that software may not be compatible with your current data files.
Well I have the iPhone and iPad and have been wanting to go to the Mac. Not having to worry about viruses (or at least not a much) would be nice. Think I might have to bite the bullet and invest in Mac. I needed something to light my fire anyway. That will give me a couple months of doodling.
The big advantage is that you can test your code on both systems, which is very handy—such as testing your layout in all PC and all Mac browsers.
But you don’t have to use an emulator. You can load Windows on the Mac with no emulators and boot p in Windows. That’s less convenient, though, as you have to reboot in Mac OS to switch over, so you can’t have both open at once.
Yep, and Windows runs on Mac. 
Of course, if you do run Windows on the Mac, you do have to worry about viruses.
You need to worry about viruses on a Mac even if you don’t run windows. If you don’t then you contribute to the Windows virus problem by helping to spread them. Also it is getting harder and harder to get viruses to run on Windows so the virus writers are starting to target other operating systems that still have security holes that can be exploited such as linux and mac osx.
Indeed. I should have said “you need to worry about Windows viruses affecting your setup if you are running Windows on the Mac”. I have virus protection software on my Mac, because there is plenty of evil stuff for Mac around now, and as you say, you also don’t want to pass on viruses to other computers, either.
Did you get any error messages come up when trying to boot into safe mode (was it able to access the hard drive)? If it’s something like the hard drive failing and and all your software will run on win7 with the existing hardware then you might want to consider just getting a new hard drive and a full copy (I personally hate upgrade copies of software, i find them too temperamental) of win7
PicnicTutorials,
Can we back up a bit. You say your “XP has fallen apart”. You didn’t say whether it’s XP itself that has failed, or the computer on which you are running it.
If there’s something wrong with your copy of XP, it must surely be possible to fix it. Something must have caused it to fail - perhaps adding a new device or installing some new software. If you can identify what that is, and remove it, you should be on your way to a solution. As a last resort, you can always re-install.
If the computer has failed (which is more likely), and if you’re sure it’s not repairable, you can always buy a new PC and install your existing copy of XP on it (assuming you have the original disks).
My point is that you don’t have to face the hassles of switching to a different and unfamiliar system, with all the compatibility issues that will involve - not to mention the learning time. Much better to stick with the system you know, if you possibly can.
Of course, there might be compelling reasons to upgrade to a more modern system. In that case, I stick with my original advice: try to get a Windows 7 system if you can. If you can’t, go for Windows 8, but be prepared to make a lot of adjustments in the way you use your computer.
Mike
Regarding the cost of software for a new OS, check with Adobe regarding their new Creative Cloud subscriptions. You can update to the latest Dreamweaver, Photoshop, etc. for a reasonable monthly price, and their licensing terms may just allow you to run the Mac and Win versions together.
Regarding booting from MacOS into Windows, that’s a moot point. I highly recommend Parallels Desktop, which allows you to boot and run Windows (or any other x86-compatible OS) simultaneously with MacOS.
Good luck to you, whatever route you take! Migrating across machines is a daunting task.
Ok it looks like I may put this on pause (again). The computer guy worked on it for 3 hours. Said he couldn’t fix it. Hooked up a Linux slave to it and downloaded some remaining files I needed. For sh*ts and giggles I booted it up after he left and all of a sudden it worked. So it appears I may have to put off my 3000 buck investment for a bit. Which is good because I’m not busting at the seems at the moment. Thanks for the advice. I will bookmark this and return back to it when it finally crashes for good.
Ps. It happened I believe because over the last few days I kept getting this weird grey popup (didn’t seem like a virus more like remnants of a old program or something). It would freeze the computer though when it popped up. My computer was in the middle of defragmentation when the thing popped up. So I guesstimated that it moved files and was unable to put them back before I rebooted. I new all I had to do was get it booted and it would fall inline. And it appears I was correct. Rebooted it many times this morning and all is good. And the strange popup has not appeared either. So it looks like I’m good for he time being.
Well, let’s hope it keeps on working, and that the problem doesn’t come back.
But you still need to know if it was XP or the computer itself that was at fault - of only to be ready to deal with the problem if it does come back.
Mike
How full was the hard drive (whichever partition windows is on)? Windows needs a certain amount of free space on whatever partition it’s on at all times as “breathing room”, possibly windows didn’t have enough free space available to it.
Hello. It was C drive. And there was/is 30G free space left out of 70G. So prob not the cause.
The popup came back. Found it. It was a massive bug in comodo antivirus 3.0. Clean_Validator.exe associated with the live virus scan causing hundreds of computers to puke like mine. I uninstalled comodo. That should fix it.