laptop problem ~ help
 

so my friend accidently unpluged her laptop power cord. She tried to restart afterwards the only screen that shows up is DOS, asking her if she wants to enter safe mode or start up normally. She tried both of them, and the same result is a black screen with a white line. Now is her laptop completely fucked? (sony vaio by the way) can she retrieve her data from it? she took it to futureshop to diagnose the problem. But i told her to bring it to crystal mall and do not let futureshop rape her wallet by repairing it


help?

you can install another OS into a new partition.. back up whatever data u need.. then wipe out your old partition

imo, best way is to take the harddrive out and use a external harddrive enclosure and back up the data that way.

If you want to install a secondary os on the 2nd partition, it's difficult. The harddrive might not be partition in to two already and if you need to create the partition you will lose the information on the harddrive.

after you do that, go to seagate.com download seatools, I believe that's what they call it. basically it's a harddrive diagnostic tool, and you can see what condition the harddrive is.

so basically you guys suspect the program is fucked, not necessarily the hardware itself nor the Hardrive?

didnt know laps are so fragile. My PC has been cut off many many times and its still fine

Most likely OS corruption. I doubt it's hardware as well. Normally power outages aren't a big problem unless it's doing some kind of file operation involving critical OS files (say like a Windows Update or something similar) and it gets into a state it can't back out of.

I'm somewhat surprised that her laptop turned off when she pulled the cord out since the laptop has a battery and should run off battery power unless she doesn't have the battery attached to the laptop at the time.

If you're not familiar with repairing the OS, do what aznboi128 suggested - remove the drive and either connect it in an enclosure or plug it into a desktop PC and pull all the files you want off it and reinstall the OS. If there's a last known good configuration (it should be on the list where you can pick safe mode), try that as well to see if it makes any difference.

+1 on OS corruption.

But the "Last known good configuration" option doesn't always start up. You can (as a last resort) force the complete Windows boot options by tapping F8 right after POST (the information about your computer) and before Windows boots. It's a short time frame, so you may have to try it more than once. When you see the POST screen you can start tapping F8.

Note that depending on the age of the laptop, if you fiddle with the hard drive you will void the warranty. This should be treated as an absolute last resort, but the best way to ensure getting everything back. 2.5" drive enclosures are dirt cheap.

A reminder that backups are always welcome- External backups can save you tons of time and especially grief when computers go down. Drive image backups are even better- it allows you to go back to a "snapshot" of your computer in the event of drive fails/viruses/OS corruptions. You could be back in action in as little as an hour. See Acronis.

Hope all goes well with your GF's laptop.

Here's what I would do:

Download and burn Ubuntu or some other LiveCD-able OS. Burn the ISO to a disc using PowerISO (free)

Put the CD in the tray, when the computer boots up get it to boot from CD (might have to hit Esc to enter the boot order or something. Just read the bottom of the screen right as it boots)

Boot up Ubuntu, as a LiveCD, go into the drive, copy files out of the laptop drive and onto an external drive or a flashdrive/thumbdrive/whatever you like to call it.

Once you're done that, exit Ubuntu and put the Windows CD in. Install Windows as normal, use the external drive to put her files back, boom done.

Oh, and don't ever take anything into Futureshop. I have the qualification they have, they don't know shit :lol

I didn't know Ubuntu had that functionality. That is pretty cool. Thanks for the tip!

If you have your windows install disk you can also run an OS repair:

http://michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

See if that helps as well.