Help! My laptop is not booting up...

[Zuerst]

I woke up this morning and used my laptop for about 30 seconds just fine and it froze. I have to cut the power and restart the damn thing but now it won't boot. Kept on giving me the "Reboot and Select proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key" message. I set the first boot device to the harddrive and 2nd to the optical/CD-ROM drive already. I took out the harddrive earlier and it seems something is loose inside when I shook it a little, is that just the needle thing inside? I thought of putting the Windows XP Pro CD in the CD-Rom drive and use that as the boot disc but I can't find my XP Pro CD. What can I do? 🙁

 

[firerock]

It sounds like you fried your HD. 🙁 Or at least corrupt your windows install.

 

[Zuerst]

Originally posted by: firerock
It sounds like you fried your HD. 🙁 Or at least corrupt your windows install.

NOOOOO!!! Is there any way that I can recover the data on the harddisk? I just bought an external harddrive to backup my drive and it fails right before I get the chance to do it...? 🙁

How did I "fried" my harddrive? What does that even mean? Did I overworked the drive?

Thanks,

 

[mehmetmunur]

Most hard-drives, just like any other piece of electronics, have a way of failing after so much use, spins in the case of a hard-drive. I do not think that you overworked it. Is your laptop still in the warranty period?

If your hard-drive is making a loud clicking noise, you know that it is failing. It is best not to use it until you can back it up. I am assuming that since you are posting messages, you have access to another computer, hopefully a desktop.

If the clicking noise is present, your best option is to remove the hard-drive and buy an adapter to plug it in your desktop and backup the files you need manually. Your laptop hard-drive will not plug directly into a desktop without an adapter. If your hard-drive is failing, then you are going to have to swap it for a new one anyway. These adapters can be found on eBay for really cheap. Though opening up your laptop might be hard if you are new to it.

There is not much you can do without a Windows CD. If you can get a Windows startup floppy disk, that might help you a little, in determining the problem, since you can run scandisk and chkdsk utilities on the hard-drive. And if your hard-drive is really dying, then you are going to need windows to reinstall it in your new hard-drive anyhow, so start looking for a new one.