brokenlaptop

Hello

On monday evening I couldnt close explorer or shut down my laptop and after 5 minutes got too frustrated and just pressed the power button. went to switch it on yesterday and as expected got the options to start in safe mode etc. however the computer wont start up in any of the 5 options, including last known good settings.

i put in what i thought was the correct windows cd and i chose repair and it said there were no hard drives attached.

i have since found my rebuild cd. however i dont want to lose all the pictures etc i have on my laptop.

any help would be greatly appreciated. i know a couple of people who have had the same problem, and they are blaiming a corrupt windows update. they have just rebuilt as they didnt have anything to lose. is this a known problem?

dai

can you see the drive listed in the bios

brokenlaptop

yes i can see a drive listed in the bios.

dai

do you have an xp disk or a restore disk

if it is a restore disk see if you can borrow a xp disk to boot into the recovery console with

download and run the h/drive makers diagnostic utility on the h/drive

http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=287

brokenlaptop

i do have a windows xp cd, which belongs to an old laptop. i have put that in and selected the repair option, and that is when it came back with cannot find any attached hard drives.

I have a fujitsu siemens rebuild cd also, which i havent used, as im worried i'll lose everything on the laptop (unless everything is already lost).

will i be able to run the diagnostic if the laptop wont boot up past the safe mode option?

dai

a laptop disk is usually a restore disk which you cannot use on another laptop is the disk is the disk bootable

check if you have a non destructive repair option when using the recovery disk

brokenlaptop

ok i will try that tonight. thanks.