Computer Help

[bigfrank]

So have manager to break my laptop some how.says no bootable device please insert boot disk.bought laptop in states and don't have discs anymore.tried other various reboot attempts that made it worse as they never got completed and it's now saying other stuff.think it's time to leave it with someone to fix

[bigfrank]

Soooo quick update...left laptop with guy my brother knows..rang yesterday to say the hard drive is away on laptop and that we was goin to oder one online and install it for me..is this a big job??? one minute laptop workin fine and then this..does this happen....

also have fotos on my laptop that i wana keep and told man all this...he not sure if he will be able too...bad times

[Bud Wiser]

Ask him to save the files from the hard drive for you  - and give you back the old hard drive whether it is damaged or not. If he cant save them there will be somebody who can, bring it to Maplin like we told you in the first place and they will either do it for you or give you an interface. What make is the HDD? It will be written on it.

[bigfrank]

I have already left my laptop with this guy my brother swears by....laptop was £1000 a year ago so getting it fixed wasnt an issue...for that kind of money i had to be willing to do what i could to get it fixed. Laptop was never dropped...just kind of stopped workin..was askin me for disc i didnt have to get it to run or something...Laptop was bought in New York which kind of makes the bringin of it back to supplier or place of purchase expensive and not likely

[Main Street]

Most probably, your man the brother swears by, will be able to get it up and running.
It's good that you are so willing to support the local economy by paying other people for their know how  
You can have a number of causes for the  laptop booting problem and a smart computer lad should be able to suss it out for you. It might be as easy as repairing the boot file or replacing the memory sticks. Even if the most expensive repair is needed - replacing your hard drive and salvaging your files, it will be worth it on a £1,000 laptop.

[illdecide]

This may or may not be related to dropping the the Laptop but since i have it hasn't been going good at all, in the middle of using it a blue screen would appear out of no where and tell me Windows detected a problem and then it shuts down...playingpoker on facebook it would regularly freeze on me and now evertime i start it up it says there is a problem with windows and starts up running chkdsk...it's telling me there is a corrupt file somewhere...WTF

P.S. The hard Drive had been hanging out when i opened the back cover as i suspected when i dropped it that maybe something had come loose, i pushed it back into place but it never made any difference to the performance of the laptop...

Help as i can't believe i haven't put my fist thru it so far...

[imtommygunn]

I'm working with someone at present with an acer laptop. The registry is however corrupt.

This is easy to restore however...

MS Office is on this. When we got the laptop it had no disk (s) or anything with it and there is no drive anyway. The laptop was received via a "third party". If I do a restore to factory default I would assume that it will just restore the OS and thus the MS Office suite will be wiped? I would like to retain the user data and can do this no problem and reinstall all other apps.

However what will happen MS Office? I can only assume it will be deleted? The point of this laptop is to run an application which requires MS Access so without Office it serves no purpose.

(No restore points were ever created... This will now be rectified)

[Abble]

bro-in-law's computer is bukked. It was running windows xp and all of a a sudden was coming up with error message:
"windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt
\windows\system32\config\system

You can attempt to repair this file by starting windows setup using the original setup cd rom.

select 'r' at the first screen to start repair"
etc, etc

now, 80% of time i can try my hand at most friends pc problems but this one has thrown me. for start even when attempting to use safe mode it always comes up with the error dialogue screen, then to make matters worse (as there are google resolutions about to resolve this) there is no original windows xp cd !!!

so, as the bro-in-law doesnt care much about whats on the machine, he's happy enough if it got wiped and we maybe got our hands on a windows cd he's happy.


any suggestions ?
1. its a painstaking process without the original windows cd and can only be repaired by the professionals ?
2. how can i wipe the machine to install windows again ?

[Abble]

bro-in-law's computer is bukked. It was running windows xp and all of a a sudden was coming up with error message:
"windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt
\windows\system32\config\system

You can attempt to repair this file by starting windows setup using the original setup cd rom.

select 'r' at the first screen to start repair"
etc, etc

now, 80% of time i can try my hand at most friends pc problems but this one has thrown me. for start even when attempting to use safe mode it always comes up with the error dialogue screen, then to make matters worse (as there are google resolutions about to resolve this) there is no original windows xp cd !!!

so, as the bro-in-law doesnt care much about whats on the machine, he's happy enough if it got wiped and we maybe got our hands on a windows cd he's happy.


any suggestions ?
1. its a painstaking process without the original windows cd and can only be repaired by the professionals ?
2. how can i wipe the machine to install windows again ?

[bigfrank]

So finally got my laptop back after 3 weeks...workin well now..ended up costing 70 quid for new hard drive installed etc....lost all my photos tho which the guy said was liabale to happen He however gave me back the old hard drive that was in laptop and said there is a way of gettin fotos from it??? Anyone know how much it would cost and would somewhere like pc world do it?

thanks

[Hardy]

So finally got my laptop back after 3 weeks...workin well now..ended up costing 70 quid for new hard drive installed etc....lost all my photos tho which the guy said was liabale to happen He however gave me back the old hard drive that was in laptop and said there is a way of gettin fotos from it??? Anyone know how much it would cost and would somewhere like pc world do it?

thanks

Google 'hard drive data recovery'. There are lots of companies that recover data from damaged hard drives, so you'll be unlucky if you don't get at least some of your photos back - depending on the extent of damage of course.

I used a company in Belfast a few years ago - can't remember their name. It was quite expensive - a couple of hundred quid as I remember, but I got everything recovered.

[bigfrank]

thanks hardy...i heard it was big money and u have kinda now confirmed that for me...few people mentioned sendin it off to belfast..like u say there should be loads online...google is my friend so to speak!! not sure of the extent of the damage as wasnt speakin to guy who fixed it..was some guy my brother knew...thanks for help

[Square Ball]

done full system restore on a laptop, wont connect to the internet atall. Should look for connections automatically but it isnt, any ideas?

[Mhic Easmuint]

Have you checked the device manager to see if the drivers are ok for the Networking/Wireless Adapter?
there should be none in there with a yellow exclamation mark

[Milltown Row2]

If not, turn it off and turn it on again. works for me