Posted: 3/4/2010 2:58:34 PM EDT
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So my new computer is on the fritz. Whenever I power it up, the Dell screen loads, it goes to a screen that says "Resuming Windows", then it goes to a black screen with the cursor and stays there. I've tried booting into safe mood, but its a no go. I've tried f2, f12, and crtl-f11 at the Dell screen, and none of them do anything. I've plugged and unplugged, removed all peripherals, etc... They all go to the blank screen with a cursor. So does anyone know what this means, or know anything else I can try? |
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Quoted: I tried the unplugging, as well as remving the excess power by holding the power button... Didn't work.used to see this all the time when i did sony tech support unplug the power and hold the power button for 30 seconds plug back in might have to also pop the bios battery while it's unplugged I however, did not try removing the BIOS battery. How does one do that? |
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I tried the unplugging, as well as remving the excess power by holding the power button... Didn't work.
used to see this all the time when i did sony tech support unplug the power and hold the power button for 30 seconds plug back in might have to also pop the bios battery while it's unplugged I however, did not try removing the BIOS battery. How does one do that? It's just a round battery on the motherboard, you need to open the case to get to it. |
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This is what I heard from Tech Service. Will any data be recoverable if I send it to a professional?
Hard drive dedded Definitely. But data recovery costs $5-10,000/hour. However there are some free tools you can try if you don't want to spend that much. |
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If it knows enough to get to the resuming windows screen, yes, there is still some data on it. There may be almost everything, or almost nothing recoverable. Any computer fixit shop should have the ability to load it up in an operating system like PE and copy files off without having to boot from it. I have no idea what they will charge you. |
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Quoted: Quoted: This is what I heard from Tech Service. Will any data be recoverable if I send it to a professional?Hard drive dedded Especially the naked pictures of your wife! Did some data recovery for a friend of a friend...found some of those and consider them payment for services rendered  |
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This is what I heard from Tech Service. Will any data be recoverable if I send it to a professional?
Hard drive dedded You can try an XP Repair install (link.) It will leave all of your files alone and just update the XP files. To be safe I would backup your drive first... but you can live on the edge, you should be OK. You can try to put it into another computer and pull data from it. It may have just gotten corrupted in the portions that Windows needs to boot. If you aren't good with computers just give one of your buddies a case of beer. I gladly help people who come to me with some sort of payment up front instead of just expecting help for free. |
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Quoted: Maybe they won't notice them. Quoted: Quoted: This is what I heard from Tech Service. Will any data be recoverable if I send it to a professional?Hard drive dedded Especially the naked pictures of your wife! Did some data recovery for a friend of a friend...found some of those and consider them payment for services rendered |
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You might try plugging the drive into another machine as a slave, either externally or internally, to see if you can copy your stuff off that way.
Pretty often a drive can shit out to where the machine won't boot but you can access it well enough to just copy the data. Then again, there are types of failure in which any power you put to it from now on would lose you more data that might've been recoverable by an expensive drive recovery firm... So it's kind of a crapshoot 
If your machine came to me at work, first thing I'd do would be ask about a backup.. If none, I'd try slaving the drive as above to try for a copy. Then I'll use diagnostics on the drive itself, and toss it at about the slightest discrepancy. Drives are cheap, data is expensive. |