Getting frustrated with laptop ....

[Lesley Jones]

Yesterday my daughters Laptop was stuck in a 'boot loop' (this is the second time in a few months that this has happened). Laptop is HP Pavillion DV5157EA purchased June 06 with additional warranty for 5 years. After first incident we took it back and the store had to take it back to the factory settings as we had no recovery discs. This time we have recovery discs and completed this procedure at home. Now it appears the laptop does not recognise any discs inserted into the disc drive.

Does anybody have any ideas how we should proceed bearing in mind that we are not very technically minded.

Thanks

 

[tim west]

If still in warranty i'd send it back

 

[TonyWarrington]

Difficult to say exactly what this is, hardware or software related.

Under the circumstances with your additional 5 year warranty I would take it back and ask for a full explanation of what is going wrong and assurances that all required software and drivers are included on the recovery disk.

If you want to have a play in the meantime.

Check that your CD is enabled: (Below is typical Windows XP)
Open Control Panel
Click on System
Select Hardware tab
Click on Device Manager
Select DVD/CD Drives
Right click and select Properties
It should say "device is working properly"
and Device is enabled"
If not you have a problem and will need to enable the device and maybe reinstall drivers


You say that you have now got the recovery disk but after using it your drive does not recognise disks do you mean CD's or floppy? It could be that BIOS settings incorrect or that drivers are needed for CD. Check on the HP website for drivers for your particular laptop.

 

[Lesley Jones]

Thank you both for your replies. The laptop has been sent back by Comet under the terms of the five year contract which we purchased for a 'full diagonistic'. We should have it back in a couple of weeks or a replacement if the problem is hardware replated.

 

[Lesley Jones]

We have my daughters laptop back - with a new hard drive. Thank goodness we took out the additional five year insurance (not something we usually do).

We also have back the old defunct hard drive as this still remains our property although it is of no use to us. It apparently still contains personal information and I am wondering how we safely dispose of this.

 

[empip]

If you are sure 'tis dead and have no desire to 'play' with the thing...
Take it apart and have a look at the innards... nice to know how they look.
Then smash the shiny disc(s) with a hammer, they hold the data.

 

[TonyWarrington]

IMO the safest/cheapest way to dispose of this is to physically destroy it. Take it apart and destroy the disk platters before dropping in the bin. For added (OTT) security deposit the disk platter bits into separate bins

If you need to get back your personal data before disposal of hd you will need to either invest in software to do it yourself or pay a company to do same (£80-100 est.)

EDIT: Snap

 

[RedLemon]

or pour lighter fluid on it and have a nice campfire in the garden

 

[Deluks]

Possible that your data is still accessible? They might have put in a preloaded drive to save time when repairing. The drive may still be readable using an external caddy or usb sata cable? If you have important files or pictures on there, don't smash it up just yet.

 

[Lesley Jones]

Thanks for your replies.

Before the laptop was sent off for repairs we did use the recovery discs in an initial effort to get everything working correctly. I believe that this 'looses' everything ! ( sorry I am not very technically minded). My daughter was upset as she has been a bit slack on backing up and she had masses of music and photos stored on there (thankfully she did not loose her A level course work).

I am wondering what type of stuff would still be possibly accessible? What would we have to buy to possibly be able to retrieve anything ourselves and how much might this cost?

 

[TonyWarrington]

I am wondering what type of stuff would still be possibly accessible? What would we have to buy to possibly be able to retrieve anything ourselves and how much might this cost?

It may be possible to save all your stored files to another HD. It will depend on the nature of the fault with the HD i.e if it is hardware then it may not be possible to see the drive.

As Deluks said you will need to connect this drive to another system to transfer information and then use software to attempt recovery.
To make the connection you will need something like this for IDE drive: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/123998

Before committing to buy why not download a demo which will allow you to see what you could recover.
I have tried both these and had good results:
Stellar Phoenix
http://www.stellarinfo.com/download.htm
R Studio
http://www.data-recovery-software.net/Data_Recovery_Download.shtml

Data recovery can also be done by a specialist company. The cost seems to average £80-£100.

 

[Lesley Jones]

Thanks for that - spoke to my daughter and she is all for taking it to pieces , she seems to no longer be concerned about the possibility of recovering anything. The prospect of using broken bits of hard drive in her final piece for A level art is more appealing.

 

[tim west]

Write to braniacs asking them to dispose of it for you, you may get asked to go watch it being filmed as they explode it for you

 

[Rankers]

Personally I would look into getting a caddy for it circa £5 on ebay; unless your drive is totally dead or the heads are knocking then you could more than likely reformat, mark bad blocks and use it as a portable storage medium.. or even a media caddy and use it to link to TV etc to watch movies , cycle photos or listen to music.... or use it to prop a wobbly table.