$”&$?#^+!? And The Horse They Rode In On

Posted on June 13, 2014 by Charles Yallowitz

Finished book 8.

Went to back up book 8 on thumb drive.

1 Year Old Laptop crashed and is pointing finger at Windows Update.

Might have lost 2 chapters.

Victory snatched from grasp and very upset.

Might not be social for a few days.

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About Charles Yallowitz

Charles E. Yallowitz was born, raised, and educated in New York. Then he spent a few years in Florida, realized his fear of alligators, and moved back to the Empire State. When he isn't working hard on his epic fantasy stories, Charles can be found cooking or going on whatever adventure his son has planned for the day. 'Legends of Windemere' is his first series, but it certainly won't be his last.
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35 Responses to $”&$?#^+!? And The Horse They Rode In On

  1. K. A. Bryce's avatar K. A. Brace says:
    June 13, 2014 at 12:24 am

    Charles, there is only one thing left for you to do—You must fall upon your sword!

    Really, I’m sorry to hear that. About two months ago I wrote a kick ass Leonard Cohen type song. I mean this was a killer and then hit don’t save accidently. It will never be the same. Sorry for your loss. Best>KB

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  3. jorobinson176's avatar jorobinson176 says:
    June 13, 2014 at 3:26 am

    That sucks! I generally email each chapter to myself as I finish it & then store them all in a folder on my gmail – just in case.

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  4. C. Miller's avatar C. Miller says:
    June 13, 2014 at 3:40 am

    OMG.
    I’ve had that happen to me a couple times, opening my laptop only to have it go into an update, which loses any unsaved progress on chapters. Now, granted, I should’ve learned a long time ago to save as I go, but I like to wait until I finish writing a chapter. (That way I can give it a name and can more easily remember which chapter is which. Not so easy to remember on a new book.)

    I’m sure a lot of people would think (or say), “Oh, it’s just a chapter or two. Rewrite it. No big deal.”

    Rewriting an entire scene that you got down THE WAY YOU WANTED IT DOWN is . . . almost impossible. (At least for me.) Everytime I’ve had to do it, they NEVER come out the same.

    Realized recently(ish) that I was missing a chapter (that I do NOT want to rewrite) from a book I hadn’t touched in a while. I was furious. Like . . . wanted to break the entire world furious.
    So I understand. And I am so sorry.

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    • Charles Yallowitz's avatar Charles Yallowitz says:
      June 13, 2014 at 6:18 am

      Thanks. Though I didn’t even restart the computer. The update happened in the morning and it died at night. I had turned it on and off before. All we can figure is that the update made my laptop incompatible, so it died when I went to backup.

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  5. Seán Cooke's avatar Seán Cooke says:
    June 13, 2014 at 8:22 am

    It’s always crushing when something like this happens. But, if it’s anything to ease your pain, the rewrite is always better. You’ll still have the general idea and direction of the chapters in your head. Best to steam through while it’s still there. 🙂

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    • Charles Yallowitz's avatar Charles Yallowitz says:
      June 13, 2014 at 8:33 am

      Yes and no. Spontaneous things happen and those perfect lines are gone. For example, an exchange that simply flew onto the page at midnight. I’m looking into recovering the files since the hard drive has to be replaced.

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  6. John W. Howell's avatar John W. Howell says:
    June 13, 2014 at 9:02 am

    !@#$ !@#$ &%^$# ! Windows.

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  7. S.K. Nicholls's avatar sknicholls says:
    June 13, 2014 at 9:38 am

    OUch! Great cloud of fear just settled over me. Didn’t put edits and proofing on thumbdrive yet.

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    • Charles Yallowitz's avatar Charles Yallowitz says:
      June 13, 2014 at 10:23 am

      I think I can kiss my royalties good-bye to get the files back.

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      • S.K. Nicholls's avatar sknicholls says:
        June 13, 2014 at 10:47 am

        That bad, huh? Maybe you were meant to write those over. That doesn’t sound like an acceptable solution, but who knows about powers greater than us? I know I would hate to have to that after all that work effort I feel for you, seriously.

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      • Charles Yallowitz's avatar Charles Yallowitz says:
        June 13, 2014 at 11:50 am

        I’m refusing to think Microsoft is a power greater than me. Really hope I don’t have to rewrite it. Though technically, you could say I lost 7 chapter sections ranging from 2-10 pages each. Think I’m just making it worse.

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  8. chrismcmullen's avatar chrismcmullen says:
    June 13, 2014 at 10:34 am

    Ouch! You have my sympathies. I back things up constantly, yet still lose a little (never feels like a ‘little’) material here and there. Curse those electrons.

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  9. Dom DiFrancesco's avatar Dom DiFrancesco says:
    June 13, 2014 at 6:18 pm

    Hey Charles, sorry to here about this. Is Microsoft Office damaged by any chance? If it is apparently the update that came out for MS Office on June 10/11 has been causing major problems. You may be able to recover if you do a system restore back to June 9th. The restore only affects the operating system and programs so none of you documents would be affected. This is just a thought, I had this happen to one of my co-workers computers this morning and after performing a repair install on office and having that fail I did a system restore and got things back up and running again. I don’t know if you are having a similar problem, but I just thought I would through this out there. I hope you are able to get things fixed.

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    • Charles Yallowitz's avatar Charles Yallowitz says:
      June 13, 2014 at 6:38 pm

      Thanks. I don’t know what the update was for. The problem is that I can’t get to rollback area. We were lucky to reach BIOS, so the issue killed the hard drive. How far were you able to get in the system?

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      • Dom DiFrancesco's avatar Dom DiFrancesco says:
        June 13, 2014 at 6:46 pm

        I was able to log into it normally, but Outlook showed that it was doing an update which said would take about 15 minutes, but had shown the same status for the last 2 days. Aside from Office, it appears that the other updates had installed correctly. Are you able to even start Windows safe mode using F8 after BIOS or is it failing immediately after BIOS?

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      • Charles Yallowitz's avatar Charles Yallowitz says:
        June 13, 2014 at 7:41 pm

        Nope. We tried for safe mode and it failed. Thankfully the warranty is still active. Replacement next week and then a day of rebuilding. Hoping to get my favorites/bookmarks recovered too.

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