Laptop died. Any ideas?

T

The Economist

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So it basically switched off. Felt really hot, so I let it cool off for a bit.
I press the power button, it has the Fujitsu logo and all that, but once it boots, the part where the Windows logo is supposed to show and load, there is just a dash flashing on the top left of the screen and nothing happens. Doesn't go further than this..

BUT, if I pop in my Windows 7 DVD, it boots, and is ready to install Windows, so what the hell happened? Laptop is working fine but it won't boot! And I can't re-install, not without backing up all my important documents, photo's etc.

I tried Windows recovery, even though its the same disc I used to install the OS, it says something of the lines of "not being the correct disc".

Any ideas?
 
Your HD probably died, physical or logical damage.

Remove it and connect it to your desktop, is it detected by bios?, listen for weird sounds (DO NOT BOOT OFF THE DRIVE)

Use GNU ddrescue, CopyR.UDMA or Media Tools Professional to image the drive to a file or another drive, you want to do a bitstream copy. Recover your data from the new imaged file or drive.
 
Last edited:
What about booting from an Ubuntu Live CD?

If it works, the first thing I would do is copy all the important stuff to another drive, and only then do some further troubleshooting, error checking, etc.

HTH and good luck.
 
What happens if you just leave it for a while, does it go past that screen with the flashing line? i have seen this before.
 
"feels hot" - probaly overheated as a result of a broken fan or something?
 
Oh snap, so even though I can boot off a disk, the hard drive is kapput? ;(

I didn't make any backups, sigh. Ok, so what are my options, remove hard drive and plug into PC?
Guess I have to take it in then? I tried removing the hard drive, it looks impossible, unless I remove the motherboard and push the hard drive out --> And I have no idea how to work laptop hardware..
But all laptops have removable hard drives? Right? :(
 
Lol, exact thing happened to my LG Laptop this morning. I dropped and it now hits a blue screen of death on every restart.
Its been forever since I needed any repairs so does anyone know of a good shop with reasonable prices in the Pretoria East region that can have a look and make the necessary repairs.

Thanks.
 
ponder said:
;)
Click to expand...

Yeah, I know that you said that, just wanted to make sure that the OP understood that.

OTOH on that same Sony it's trivial to replace the CPU, you can just do it by lifting a flap.

I sometimes wonder how the laptop designers order their priorities.
 
RandomGRK said:
Lol, exact thing happened to my LG Laptop this morning. I dropped and it now hits a blue screen of death on every restart.
Its been forever since I needed any repairs so does anyone know of a good shop with reasonable prices in the Pretoria East region that can have a look and make the necessary repairs.
.
Click to expand...

Your hard drive suffered logical or physical corruption if you are getting a BSOD & you dropped it. Logical is mostly easy to repair, physical means you try and get as much data off as you can and toss the drive.

Best to remove the HD and try and get your data off before you send it for repairs as they don't give a toss about your data.
 
if its not under warranty anymore, you can replace the drive yourself by getting a new 2.5 inch drive, thats if its a SATA drive thats in there.
 
Have the exact same problem with my cousin's old asus laptop, logo comes, boot screen comes up then just a little flashing line at the top for the next hour until you decide to switch it off again.

If I push F8 the screen comes up where you can choose safe mode but safe mode is also a blank screen.

Had to re-partition the drive and re-install windows, couldnt find any other way.

Actually just fixed it yesterday~

I think its a logical corruption
 
Ok managed to salvage the hard drive... Problem though, it won't let me access any of my files as I "don't have permission".

Any ideas on how to bypass this?
 
The Economist said:
Ok managed to salvage the hard drive... Problem though, it won't let me access any of my files as I "don't have permission".

Any ideas on how to bypass this?
Click to expand...

It has to do with folder permissions. It is currently "owned" by the user account on the XP machine.
Right click the folder, choose properties.
Click on the security tab, then on advanced.
Go to the ownership tab and click edit.
Locate your current account name or type it in and select it.
Check the box to allow this to propagate to all subfolders and containers, then click apply/ok.
It may take some time to run through, but afterwards you will be able to access the folder and the files in it.
 
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