Crappy Afternoon - Broken Laptop, Lost Data(kinda), & a Lesson in RAM/HDD

Started by Zexion, February 06, 2013, 10:00:33 pm

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Zexion

Today started off GREAT. I woke up super late, yet still managed to shower and get all squeaky clean before heading off to class (late, yet still before the teacher). My day went normal as usual, going to class, then lunch, back to my room. As I open my laptop.. BOOM! BSOD. I didn't think much of it seeing as how it had happened occasionally throughout the years I've had it. Today was different though.. When I booted up the system, I was greeted by "No bootable device found. Press F1..blah" I tried everything from removing and replacing it, to running diagnostics. I just decided to give up.

After messing with it, I learned that the hard drive was still fine, but my computer was not picking it up. I learned that it would still occasionally pick it up when I ran diagnostics on it, but it would not load. Instead I decided to go with switching back to my old laptop. (Which was easier said than done.)

My old laptop had gotten fked by Ccleaner. I used it to clean up some space, but it deleted ALL known file associations. I couldn't download a fix because even though google chrome (miraculously) worked, NOTHING else did. From paint, to .rar, .exe, .xcf, .png EVERYTHING was unreadable. I thought all hope was lost, but luckily for me my room mate had a Windows 7 64 bit OS disc with him. Thanks to him I was able to format the c drive and clean install windows 7 on my old laptop.

Along this EXTREMELY LONG process I learned that even though this "old"-"new" laptop is the exact same model as the one I had been using, the person who sold it to my dad (the same person who sold the first one) ripped him off 1gb of ram. This laptop effectively only had 1gb of ram until I decided to steal one from my old computer hehe.

To wrap it up:
  • I currently cannot access my old projects/hundreds of millions of graphics
  • I learned what ram looks like.
  • I learned what a HDD looks like.
  • I now have a completely useless laptop laying around, with a not so useless hard drive.

Blizzard

I had a very similar problem just a few days ago. I had a secondary Win 8 install and miraculously it was able to fix the partition during boot up. I can also recommend MiniTool Partition Wizard if you wanna try to get your data back as it can recover lost partitions and do surface tests on them to find problematic areas and sectors. You should definitely try it, you might be able to save everything.

How you could make this work: If you have a flash drive, create a bootable Windows version and install MiniTool on it. Then boot your old laptop and let it check the HDD and it might be able to recover the lost partitions. Because your data is basically still there, only the OS/HDD doesn't realize it's still there.
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Zexion

Is there some way I can plug it in directly to my new/old laptop? Like via usb or something? Honestly after installing home premium 64bit and adding the extra gb of ram, this runs way better than my old one.

Blizzard

You'd first had to get your old laptop back working and then you could transfer all the data.
Check out Daygames and our games:

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Quote from: winkioI do not speak to bricks, either as individuals or in wall form.

Quote from: Barney StinsonWhen I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead. True story.

Ryex

it sounds like your boot record got corrupted, happened to my laptop a while back. it can be repaired though I cant remember the process ATM, usualy inserting teh install disk and booting from it will give you an option to repair your computer. in that dialog there is a "startup repair" tool, running that SHOULD fix the problem, if it does boot properly after that but the problem comes back latter your probably experiencing Hard Disk Failure Like I did.

if I were you I would try plugging the HDD form your old laptop into the new laptop and see if your new laptop boots it. if it does this will confirm the problem is in the file system boot record (fixable by you).

If on the other hand your old laptop boots the HDD form the new laptop there is a Hardware problem in your new laptop (you new laptop is not fixable by you unless its soothing as simple a a loose cable.).
I no longer keep up with posts in the forum very well. If you have a question or comment, about my work, or in general I welcome PM's. if you make a post in one of my threads and I don't reply with in a day or two feel free to PM me and point it out to me.<br /><br />DropBox, the best free file syncing service there is.<br />

Zexion

I already tried to put it in my new laptop, and it reads it, but it can't be run because of the fact that it's signed from another computer :\ basically useless unless formatted which would also make it useless..

Edit:
What pisses me off more, is the fact that I had access to it today at one point, but instead of backing up my shit I just thought it would be fine, but no of course not.. also the secret project I was working on was on there lol. Literally hundreds of graphics I had just made are stuck in a useless drive D:

Ryex

sign by another computer? since when did windows sign drives? bullshit! how the hell are you supposed to upgrade the hardware
in your computer and keep your data?

in any case as I said boot your broken computer from a windows install disk and choose the option "repair your computer" and then select "startup repair". it more than likely that it will fix the boot record and you'll be on your way again
I no longer keep up with posts in the forum very well. If you have a question or comment, about my work, or in general I welcome PM's. if you make a post in one of my threads and I don't reply with in a day or two feel free to PM me and point it out to me.<br /><br />DropBox, the best free file syncing service there is.<br />

Blizzard

If you use the NTFS file encryption option on drives or files, you won't be able to access/open them if you plug you HDD into another PC.
Check out Daygames and our games:

King of Booze 2      King of Booze: Never Ever
Drinking Game for Android      Never have I ever for Android
Drinking Game for iOS      Never have I ever for iOS


Quote from: winkioI do not speak to bricks, either as individuals or in wall form.

Quote from: Barney StinsonWhen I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead. True story.