Laptop won't start

[The Unvirginiser]

My brother's laptop isn't loading up. It gets to starting Windows, and then freezes after that on a black screen, but you can see the cursor. His disk drive is broken, so I can't try anything with the windows disk. It's a Sony Vaio running windows Vista.

 

 

Any help would be great, thanks.

[Wolf68k]

Most laptops have a protected partition that can be used to restore the system back to factory default, which means losing all of the data. So I would take the drive out, put it in an enclosure and connect it to a working system and try to access the drive's data and back it up. Then put the drive back in and follow whatever steps are needed to do the factory restore.

You could try to run chkdsk on the drive while it's connected to the working system and maybe that will fix the problem.

[Stinky12]

Open task manager and run explorer.

If that works, run a malware scan.

[Wolf68k]

Oh yeah, why didn't think of this before. Sorry.

See if you can start in SafeMode.

[okei]

Lol, I had this problem with a Sony VAIO. In the end I got pissed off with it and threw it out of the window.

[Garfield 2]

Happened to my Dell XPS. Replace the hard drive.

[james227uk]

Holy sh*t, this just happened to me on the laptop I said was failing some months ago. Using it with Parted Magic ATM.

 

With mine

 

- Gets to starting Windows, then reboots itself and recommends Startup Repair. If I run that, Black Screen with a cursor.

- Windows 7 disc does not work; Black Screen with a cursor.

- Windows XP disc does not work, blue screen

 

If you want to try OP, continually press F8 after the Post Screen, then select Disable Automatic Restart Upon System Failure, and see if the BSOD (if you get one) says "UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME"

 

I came to the conclusion that the hard disk is dead. I hope it isn't the same for you OP. Google points to quite a few Microsoft Forum topics which might help you, if you're situation isn't as bad as mine.

 

Sorry for a minor thread jack, if this is one

 

EDIT: Fix'd for now. This is what I did

 

1) I went into the BIOS and changed the SATA controller from ACHI to IDE

2) This allowed me to boot into Startup Repair, but windows would not detect Windows 7. So I skipped this screen and went to the Startup Repair menu

3) I then clicked on Command Prompt

4) After trial and error, I got the command properly. I typed in "chkdsk C: /f /r"

5) Once it completed, I went back into the BIOS and changed it back to ACHI

6) Windows booted

 

This may or may not work for you OP, but it's worth a try

Edited December 6, 2010 by james227uk