Singapore Expats

Hi,
Got back from my weekend away to discover that not only had my hard drive crashed - windows won't start up - missing some driver, but my boot drive also is not working

I'm not hopeful, but does anyone have a recommendation of someone to take a look at these? They say things happen in 3's - so I'm now due for some good luck (holding thumbs, touch wood etc).

Thank you muchly
Kim

"Have you tried turning it off and on again?"

But seriously, it could be a number of things. What's the last thing your computer displays on the screen?

Is it a laptop or a desktop?

Yeah I have tried rebooting it (3, 4, 5, 6 times), but it tells me there is a driver missing even before i get to the Windows page, so I tried to use my backup, but that isn't working either

Its probably time to get a new one, but I'd definitely like to get the data off this one first!

Anon

Hi,

I'm not an expert, but have you tried booting up to Windows Safe mode?

carteki wrote:Hi,
Got back from my weekend away to discover that not only had my hard drive crashed - windows won't start up - missing some driver, but my boot drive also is not working

I'm not hopeful, but does anyone have a recommendation of someone to take a look at these? They say things happen in 3's - so I'm now due for some good luck (holding thumbs, touch wood etc).

Thank you muchly
Kim

I'm not sure I follow you. How would you know if you are missing a driver if your HDD crashed?

The easy thing would be to just connect the original hard drive to another computer so you could get the data and start fresh.

But, not enough information.

You could try to boot with a Windows CD, try to get a command prompt and at least you could navigate the drive.

Or you could download a linux distro (e.g. ubuntu for example), create a live CD (which will let you boot into a full-blown linux environment which runs off the CD) and try to do some salvaging from there. Just throwing around ideas since I'm not there to see what's really going on.

Thank you all kindly for your help, but it doesn't answer the question -
do you know a technician who can try to recover the data etc. I know I can just walk into Sim Lim, but it would be nice to use someone who someone has had experience with.

Does the HDD spin at all?

If it does, get a cheap external housing (2.5 or 3.5" depending whether the HDD is from a notebook or desktop). plug it into another PC and download a copy of this:

http://www.pcinspector.de/default.htm?language=1

I've used it a number of times with great success. The only problem is that your HDD must not have physically crashed. (fails to spin up).

Oh yeah, it's free as well.

Google on 'PC Doctor'. I had to do this once, the solution wasn't ideal (I had a new id/profile on my PC), but at least all of my data was intact...

I didn't find any appropriate thread to post my problem other than this one. I'm getting freeze at bios. Is it a motherboard problem?? Or its happening due to other reasons?? How can I be sure why this is happening? Can any one help?

adumponti wrote:I didn't find any appropriate thread to post my problem other than this one. I'm getting freeze at bios. Is it a motherboard problem?? Or its happening due to other reasons?? How can I be sure why this is happening? Can any one help?

Can be for many reasons, including memory issue of bios busted

was this working fine before and stopped or is it a new system ?

If it is a desktop, unplug all devices and start and add .. and then see where it stops ..

carteki wrote:Yeah I have tried rebooting it (3, 4, 5, 6 times), but it tells me there is a driver missing even before i get to the Windows page, so I tried to use my backup, but that isn't working either

Its probably time to get a new one, but I'd definitely like to get the data off this one first!

Anon

If it told you a driver is missing, then you may be able to start up in safe mode, it should be easy to recover! The dll's are dynamic link libraries core files, which may be corrupted.

The hard disk must be spinning otherwise you wouldn't get the message, they are not yet that clever, to send messages from the grave. Sound's more like the windows registry has been corrupted and it will not start windows. Your data is still safe by the sounds of it.

Starting in safe mode doesn't install all the drivers at all, so if it starts up in safe mode it will indicate a conflict of memeory sharing of the hardware, if it doesn't start up in safe mode you can count on a core ddl corrupted. Try safemode first then you need some one to analyse it. It's more likely to be spyware, or malware changes in the registry, Also if you have been uninstalling programs this can cause this problem too, as the programs may have left something nasty behind.

It's difficult to actually know without looking at it, but you say it's giving an error message of cannot load driver, which is a good indication that your hard disk isn't dead, just some nasty is blocking it loading a core windows file...

adumponti wrote:I didn't find any appropriate thread to post my problem other than this one. I'm getting freeze at bios. Is it a motherboard problem?? Or its happening due to other reasons?? How can I be sure why this is happening? Can any one help?

Bios = Basic input/output system configuration which allows your software to communicate with your hardware, if it's freezing it more likely that you have been changing the settings, if anything.
without understanding what you are doing so you have knocked it out of synchronisation.

If it's a boot problem you will have error messages in the sound of beeps, the beeps tell you what is not functioning, on the hardware side, it is not the bios freezing it's the bios doing it's job of detecting hardware problems. Bios freeze is when nothing happens, becuase its out of sync, due to people not understanding what they are doing.
Bios rarely freezes, but it does happen some electronic motherboards have a higher failure rate than others.

My guess is that you may have an inquisitive mind or want to clock your motherboard on the desktop. otherwise you would not even mention the bios, as this area is normally out of bounds to consumers in fact the majority wouldn't even know what a BIOS was, though i have seen many people eager to play around inside there, without knowing the results of their actions. Or if you have not touched the BIOS at all, and it cannot boot give any sounds, it's likely to be dead if old, the RTC battery life on a motherboard is around 3 to 5 years and cost a couple of$. Other than that you need to have someone look at it! Compatibility problems could also be of branded hardware like memory chips It's a test of elimination to find the fault from scratch. However out of sync BIOS is very common for those that like to fiddle around.

Has anyone used a local laptop repair service and been satisfied with price and results?

Yeah had a PC Doc come out a fix my completely shafted desktop.

All data was intact...