My laptop refuses to boot!! I need that data though!

[prankmonkey]

Oh dear.. so I got a new laptop a couple of months ago, it's been doing great, seemed sturdy enough. Yesterday I left to go to work, was working fine when I left the house, got it on the train ready to watch a movie, and the thing wouldn't boot. I crossed my fingers, put it away and waited until i got to work, tried plugging it in, still nothing. It was in a pretty sturdy hard case, i don't think it took any big hits?

Anyway, the power switch works, the light comes on, the hard drive tries to spin up, then stops. It sits with the monitor blank, no boot beep, nothing. Now I'm hoping it's something pretty benign.. anyone got ideas? Maybe the cooler came unseated? Or did I damage the harddrive? Or something worse? (sob)

1) any ideas/suggested quick fixes I could try?

The real problem is this.. it's got a lot of company data which I need to recover ASAP, several months work which isn't backed up in its entirety (Yes, I've learnt my lesson!). I really REALLY need to try and get at it, I'm considering taking out the drive and hooking it to my desktop.

2) is this feasible? I read on this forum about programs like pc inspector? anyone tried this?

It may (I need to check) be under warranty, but I can't afford to wait for it to be sent back, fixed and returned, I really need it working now if at all possible...

any help or suggestions would be most welcome..

 

[/\\/3|2o]

Sounds like its not a hard drive problem. If it was, you would at least get past the POST screen.

I think the best thing to do is try and get an adapter for it and hook it up to a desktop like you said. Or if you are with some co-workers with similar laptops, ask them if you can borrow theirs for a bit and swap out the hard drives (then you can put their hard drive in your laptop and see if it will boot with theirs in it. If it doesnt, then its not a hard drive problem and i would bet it has something to do with the system board.)

Keep us posted!

 

[alien dork]

what you could do is get one of those 2.5"(laptop drives are 2.5" right?) hard drive enclosures. you can take out that hard drive from that computer (be careful not to break anything), and then stick it in that 2.5" case and plug it into any pc and get ur data off that way.