The $1400 Hard Drive failure.

[Stavros]

For the past two and a half hours I've been trying to resurect my dad's buisness laptop. All he needed to do was print and send a business expense report by Thursday (I think). It's strange how it happened. I installed the printer drivers to print off our printer only to find that no matter how I tried to print, the printer refused to print. So, I ran the troubleshoot and tried everything. Then it told me to try a reboot. So I shut down the laptop and wait about a minute and boot it back up. Lo and Behold! I get a "There has been a read disk error. Pleas press Ctrl+Alt+Del to reboot." So, I reboot it (yet again) only to get the same error. I tried rebooting at least six times in a feeble attempt reboot. Then an idea strikes me: Use a Linux Live CD. Only to find that all my Live CDs are for AMD64 (Dad's is using an Intel Pentium III). So I try Damn Small Linux only to find that I cannot for the life of me find the file manager. So, I give up on that and then try to do a back up using CDriveBack. Only to get sever hundred (maybe a thousand?) errors. Not good.

Oh how the mighty have fallen.

Sometimes I hate technology.

~An angry Stavros

All other Admins If this needs to be moved to General Discussion, by all means move it.

[floodhound2]

Sorry for your troubles. I would however try checking the cable that connects to the hard drive.

Also you could take out the hard drive put it into a different computer making sure to set the jumper to slave and copying the files needed to other computer.

Another idea is to do a hard boot, i.e. turning off the dam computer totally then checking in the bios if the hard drive is listed.

Report back to us.

[ayu]

wow man, sucks =/

Something similar happened to me a little while back, and ironicly enough it happened when I had installed Norton ^^ (it was on a test computer)

[DNR]

Well, not to be a dick, but.

Where are the damn recovery disks? Even the Windoze cd would be helpful in restoring the HD

My laptop has the OEM recovery Disk, Driver disks, etc I would even contact the maker/seller and see if they can send you one. But, your deadline is thursday..

Tell your dad he should have backed up his important file to another source like an internet portal or a bloody disk. Never trust one resource to hold all your valuable data.

DNR

[computathug]

I have come to this problem before and as floodhound said you have to take the hdd out and insert it to another pc as the slave drive and then copy all files from the d) drive to the c) drive or however you have them listed. You can try a fixmbr and other solutions but i dont think they will work. I recommend a low level format using partition magic or kill disk and reformatting the hdd from start. Seems the mbr is probably corrupted

[DNR]

the problem with the hd swap, its a lappie, not a desktop

[computathug]

Thats what happens when you only get 3 hours sleep a night =P.

Ok then you could try some other 3rd party software like PTDD Partition Doctor. Some have a 30 day free trial as well

[DNR]

hey np Thug, I am assuming that he doesn't have a similar model/make lappie to swap to. Just his luck he has the same make, but its a few years newer/older, and the part aint going to swap - I think thats a propriety thing they do to make people buy new lappies every coupla years

DNR

[Stavros]

DNR
Where are the damn recovery disks? Even the Windoze cd would be helpful in restoring the HD

I neglected to mention that that was the first thing I asked dad and Jim (my brother). Being the king of organization ( ) I couldn't find even my XP disc. When I get home I'm burning another copy of my XP disc and seeing if that works. Then I'll try what floodhound said.

About backing it up...this computer gets less than a half hours use a month (maybe not even that much). It was the last thing he (and even I would) suspect for a HD failure. But I digress, you're right, it should have been backed up.

All that really needs to be backed up is the file dad worked all day on yesterday. Other than that it has no important files. All our "important" files (i.e. our Europe Trip pictures, dads' downloaded music) have been saved to my 500 GB external Hard drive (but that's not really relevant).

Edit: First thing I'm doing when I get home is taking the hdd out and plugging it up to either dad's, bro's or my computer. And seeing if I can extract the file from there. Failing that I'll try other suggestions.

[floodhound2]

Really you don't need any disk to try to fix this problem. In my opinion it is not software related this is most likely a hardware problem. This is why i suggested checking bios to see if the hard drive is recognized. If the disk is noticed then i would lean on a software problem, but until then it is a loose cable connection or motherboard issue. A well know problem for older computers is card creep and this may apply to this computer.


Good luck

[Oppconsulting]

Also where was it sitting dam laptops heat like pilsberry magic cook ovens. my 366laptop sits on 3 fan cooler with a 4th rigged right at the hard drive and cpu cooler blow hole!!!! to many people I know sit these heat bombs on laps couches etc and no air flow and backed up heat will fry your drive and toast the whole dam laptop but I have only seen 20 or so blown by heat others in fish aquarium one dog ate it almost half of the dam thing and dam dog still lives hmmm if my dog lap didnt kill it I sure ass hell would!!! and I have found gerbils in home pcs and most every other dammed small thing and animal a dam kid can shove in a pc really amazeing at times 8O 8O 8O

[Stavros]

I'm shutting this thread down. I came home only find that the laptop is gone. I think dad said something about sending it back to the IT department of his buisness (which requires mailing).

In short, there's nothing else to be done on my part. Thanks for all the advice though. Too bad I couldn't use it.

[DNR]

Well, I just wanted to say, welcome back Opp

DNR

Thiz biztch is now _Locked_