Help me with my new Laptop

Asked By maryam mike 0 points N/A Posted on - 11/05/2011

Hi experts ,

I received a laptop from a colleague at work and I have been using it for some time. It was working fine until it suddenly crashed. When I tried to reboot it, I got an error message saying “Disk Read Error. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to Restart”. I tried to reboot it a number of times but I kept on getting the same error message. I even tried connecting it to my new laptop and though I found the HDD, I could not open it. My screen would just freeze and the only way I could shut it down is to course it through the Task Manager or to just disconnect the cable. I also tried booting the Active Disk as well as Recover to no avail.

I could not afford to lose my computer because I have a lot of important data stored in it. I am really desperate now and I am hoping you could help me figure this out. Thank you very much.

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Answered By gmac0612 0 points N/A #105540

Help me with my new Laptop

The symptoms (sudden crash, boot error, inaccessible in another system) point to failure of the hard disk. You should immediately stop using the disk and start trying some recovery solutions.

Photorec is a free recovery solution that you can try. Depending on the condition of the drive, it can recover a lot of information. You can find download of the software here. Plug the drive into the other laptop as this is where we will be doing our work. Make sure you have plenty of free space on the other laptop, as you will be using its hard drive as a destination for any files that can be saved.

There is good guide on how to use the software here, which should work in most cases. Be aware that the recovery process will take a lot of time, so make sure your working laptop has AC power and is not set to sleep after inactivity.

You could also try Recuva, which is another free recovery program. It has a slightly friendlier interface, but I think Photorec does a more thorough job. There are also some commercial tools such as HDD Regenerator and Spinrite which offer many success stories, but I have tried neither of them.

If this process doesn't work, you may be out of luck unless you can afford a professional data recovery company. They have specialist tools for the job and are often successful where the user may fail.

In future, you should take a regular backup of your most important data to an external hard disk, another computer or even writable CD/DVD. If this laptop is still in its warranty period, you may be able to have the HDD replaced but the vendor will probably not offer any data recovery options.

I hope this helps,

Gareth

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• Posted on - 11/05/2011
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Answered By Gertrude Nelson 5 points N/A #105541

Help me with my new Laptop

Dear,

At first you should make a backup of your most important data, than you will install Windows newly. After completing installation, you will setup any license version anti-virus and update it.

I think this will solve your problem.

Thank you.

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• Posted on - 10/25/2012
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