Laptop failure

[RichP]

Hi all

I’d appreciate any thoughts regarding how to recover my laptop which has developed a fault as follows:

5 year old Acer laptop running Windows XP SP2.

Immediately following “power on”, a message is displayed stating that Windows did not start properly last time and I’m provided with three options which from memory are as follows:

1. start Windows in Safe mode

2. start Windows from the state that was last successful

3. start Windows normally

(or words to those effects)

The “Safe Mode” is not successful – the machine starts loading a long list of files and then crashes

For both options 2 and 3 the machine shows the Windows start-up screen flash, and then goes to a dark blue screen from which it never recovers.

Most of my files are held on a separate NAS anyway, but my Outlook email and associated archives are held on the C drive and I’d like to recover those.

I’m not sure where to go from here - my preference is to recover the files I need and then see if a new installation of Windows will sort it out. Any suggestions (other than those involving a hammer!) would be appreciated.

I can post pics (photos) tonight of what the screen actually shows later this evening if helpful.

Cheers

Rich

[pete g]

this happened to me

it was the hard drive failed

tigger removed it and managed to access the harddrive and recover most the infor for me.

by plugging it in and using it as a usb mass device i believe on another computer.

fitted another hardrive and computer now useable again  

well done tiggs  

ps let you win next time   only joking  

[chris7273]

If the fault comes from Windows : You can try to boot from a Linux LiveCD : http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/download

Then, once Linux is loaded, you can access the datas present on your hard drive and save them.

[bhouse]

It sounds as if one of the system files is corrupt and needs to be replaced.

If you still have the XP installation discs, it's worth inserting the disc and then booting. It should try to boot from the CD drive first (if it doesn't you can alter that but with luck you won;t need to).

You should then get a screen offering 'repair' as one of the options - it's probably worth trying that before any more complicated stuff.

Good luck!

[RichP]

Couple of good options there - many thanks - will try tonight.

[peterg]

I've just had to rebuild a desktop that did similar (turned out to be a bad memory card in the end so I removed the offending bit - still left with 2GB memory so fine for XP)

To get the data off before possibly losing it during a recovery I went down to Maplins and bought a Winstar SATA to USB dock, it's also a USB hub and multi memory card reader all for £29.99 as it's on offer. Took the SATA drive out of the PC dropped it into the dock, copied all the data off then replaced it into the desktop and reloaded Windows  

here

[RichP]

I like the look of that Peter - if the soft options above don't work I'll be giving that a go. Many thanks.

[Stuart]

You can get SATA or IDE laptop hard drive caddies off ebay for about £3 inc. p&p.  I have a Pluscom IDE one and it's been fine for over a year.  USB cable included too

[chazpowerslide]

I had this issue, it was a dodgy hard drive.

I replaced it with a bigger one, put the old one in a caddy abd recovered the data off it via a usb cable.

I re-loaded the laptop from the recovery discs and it's been fine since.

It wasn't difficult to TBH.

Chaz.

[RichP]

Thanks for all the tips. I'm in the process of downloading Ubuntu on another Pc - 3 hours! I have a slow link! No windows disks as it came pre-loaded. Fingers crossed but certainly the option to hook up the hard drive via usb sounds encouraging.

[GreigM]

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm should sort it