question

Blisterz · July 30, 2003, 17:47

Kinda a weird question.

Ok, a few months ago a girl i know was attacked on her way home. She was scared and asked me to stay with her untill it was all worked out. Her computer was acting really slow and buggy (her son had installed over 20 porn dialers on it). So she asked me to format it and installed windows ME on it for her. I tried and 3 times durring the format it froze up and kept reseting the bios. So I told her that I was not sure how to fix it and I would not be able her help her. Well a few days later we had a huge fight and I left there. 3 months later I get a call from her saying she took the computer to the store and that "I stole half her harddrive" (maybe she means memmory even though it was a celeron 500 with a 6 gig HD and 128 megs of ram). She said she si going to call the police. I was thinking there must be a way to look back in the records (she just repaired the OS so its stil the same install of 98) and see what hardware has been swaped in or out of the comp.

Any advice guys?

mrmitchell · July 30, 2003, 17:59

Good luck.

I don't think the police are actually bored enough to deal with some dumb blonde frantically ranting about how her friend "stole half her hard drive," though. You're probably in the clear about that, especially since most threats to call the police are idle threats designed to piss people off.

Oerdin · July 30, 2003, 18:18

She hasn't a clue. Tell her you did no such thing and you are disappointed she would accuss you of sothing so stupid.

mrmitchell · July 30, 2003, 18:20

Be outright. Tell her you are disappointed she is stupid.

('Steal half your hard drive', though? How did you do that? You cracked it open and took out a platter or something? And why would someone steal only 64MB of memory? Isn't that like robbing the bank to get five bucks?)

Chemical Ollie · July 30, 2003, 18:21

Install your own porn dialer and have her pay you a huge monthly fee...

Blisterz · July 30, 2003, 19:05

just in case the police take this **** serious. Is there no way to trace back if say 3 months ago I took out my 30 gig fujitsu HD and put in a maxtor 15 gig HD. Would that show up anywhere on my comp?

Skanky Burns · July 30, 2003, 19:19

No. The only permanent storage on a computer (besides the bios) is the h/d itself. Remove that, you remove all the information the computer has stored.

Unless she has a record from the store she bought it from that the h/d was a 30gig before, then you won't be able to prove anything. By the same token, she also won't be able to prove anything.

Tuberski · July 30, 2003, 21:14

Just make sure you hide the 30 gig HD.

ACK!

reds4ever · July 30, 2003, 21:19

MAYBE it was a large HD and you formatted to (say) 30 GB for Windows?

geeslaka · July 30, 2003, 21:58

If reds4ever is right then you can prove her wrong by physically looking at the hard drive. Every hard drive has a sticker on it that has the size and various other attributes on it.

Nubclear · July 30, 2003, 22:01

Um...Let her call the police. Get a computer expert in there, and say thats it's IMPOSSIBLE to steal half a harddrive

Then sue her for all shes worth

reds4ever · July 30, 2003, 22:02

Quote:

Originally posted by geeslaka
If reds4ever is right then you can prove her wrong by physically looking at the hard drive. Every hard drive has a sticker on it that has the size and various other attributes on it.

Remember the 'MAYBE' was in capitals, its just I've seen HD space go missing when it's formatted and thats all Windows 'sees', the only(?) way to get it back is with FDisc or Partition Magic

Kirnwaffen · July 30, 2003, 22:10

It is possible that windows 'stole' all of that memory for use as virtual memory. You could look at those settings (At least for me, you usually find a gig or so of 'missing' hd space).