Problem with mates laptop.

Drake5

Drake5

Drake5

Soldato
Joined
12 Dec 2005
Posts
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My mate gave me his laptop so I could attempt to fix it, but I'm not quite sure what's going on.

When you start the laptop up, it'll just get stuck on the 'Starting Windows 7' screen and won't move off it at all.

I thought a format would be a good idea, so I put in the Windows 7 disc and after booting from CD and 'loading files', the screen just stays black with the mouse courser visible.

Could their be more of a hardware problem going on?

Cheers
 
When booting up, keep pressing the F8 key to bring up the boot options.

Does it get any further if you choose 'Safe Mode With Command Prompt'?

If you manage to get to the command prompt, type:

chkdsk c: /f/r

let it do its thing. Once that's complete also try sfc /scannow

Once they have finished, you can type Explorer at the command prompt to get the desktop to load.

Does this allow any progress?
 
I would try installing Windows onto a different hard drive and see what happens.
If you can install onto another hard drive,test once again trying to install onto the original hard drive this might prove it is a hard drive problem
If you can not install onto a different hard drive and you see the same problem then the fault lies else where.

Mmmmmmmm

Maybe the first thing to do is boot up into the BIOS and make sure all looks well, load up the BIOS defaults then try to install and see what happens.


.
 
Tom_D said:
I don't have a spare laptop HDD. Hmm, not sure what else I can do.
Click to expand...


I can only think of three options.

Take it to a PC shop to get tested out

Buy a new or cheaper second hand HDD

buy a SATA lead to connect a 3.5" HDD to a lappy and do a new install.
Depending on you having a spare PC HDD.

It really sounds like HHD failure to me
 
boot a live cd or any os that you can boot from a memory stick.

you will need to tell the bios to boot this first.

this will show you if its windows/harddrive failure or a real hardware problem.
 
tnx said:
Take it to a PC shop to get tested out
Click to expand...

We'll have none of that talk on this forum!! I would remove the drive and hook it up to my desktop, then do a full format, reinstall drive and install windows. A full format will check for bad sectors on the drive, which a quick format does not do.
 
Cheers guys, I will take a look through the steps provided.

Also, I did some research last night and I read that in some cases trojans can prevent the laptop from booting into windows and formatting because it overwrites certain security principles?
 
I had a problem like this with a clients laptop at work. I couldn't boot into anything, so i removed the hdd, slaved it on another computer and backed it up.

We gave him a new hdd with a fresh copy of windows 7 (used produkey to find the os and office keys while slaved) and transferred all his documents and re-installed the majority of his programs (that i could download without disks.)
 
I would boot into a live cd (e.g. hirens) run a hd checking utility, if that came back ok I would then use gparted or parted magic to format and create the partition and then install windows. That way linux would be doing the formatting which wouldn't be affected by a windows based virus.
 
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