First off, calm down.
Worst case, if you can’t recover the OS, you can buy an enclosure and mount the hard disk as an external drive on another box (most PC places like Best Buy can also recover data from a damaged OS disk).
Now, let me look again at your problem statement.
Win 7 or XP? Restore mode? Do you have any operating system disks?
The very FIRST thing you do is take you hard drive to a professional and get him/her to back up your data to some other media type: USB drive or DVD.
Then explore options for fixing your computer.
What is the exact error message that your getting? is there a code, if there is please post it and I will look it up. Usually those blue screen of death messages can be some virus took control of your computer or something else is going on so let’s have a look.
Do you also have the Windows CD that came with your computer.? if you do you can always restore, or try in safe mode to do a restore to a time when everything was working properly
There should be an error code — write it down and post it. If you can take a clear picture of it and then post it (using whatever you are using to post now) that would be better.
Don’t mind the jokes if they come — no one will give you purposeful bad advice here.
/johnny
No jokes, then I can’t advice you to ‘BUY A MAC’. Let me guess it’s a DELL w/Vista. My first guess would be a BAD Memory Chip, resetting won’t fix that. BUT-If you can boot up into SAFE MODE, Try to do a check disk. In Vista or Win 7, right click (the other button) on the COMMAND PROMPT in the ACCESSORIES FOLDER and run as ADMINISTRATOR. TYPE CHKDSK/F at the DOS PROMPT, may require REBOOT. IF the Hard Drive is OK and IF it’s just CORRUPT WINDOWS FILES, this should correct it.
If worse comes to worse, you can have someone burn you an Ubuntu live disc which will allow you to run the OS from a CD drive.
So long as your hard drive us OK you can recover all your files.
http://www.ubuntu.com/download
You’re getting good advice so far. I’ll be back later to look-in on the thread, and see if there’s anything I can contribute to help you, t.
Are you logged in?? Seriously, if its a Dell, its a motherboard. Should get $65 on craigslist.. same happened to me.. Dell laptops are POS and customer service is to “Bob” in India..
I recommend chkdsk. Also, it is customary to identify one’s hardware and software when requesting support, and a dozen exclamation points won’t make a difference.
I hope they don’t revoke your parole because of this incident.
It would help to have the error codes.
Can you boot to a c:\ prompt?
I had a similar thing happen to my wife's old computer and it had 8 years of kids pictures that she hadn't backed up. I would have paid thousands of dollars to get those off. It cost about $50.
On a different computer I downloaded some recovery software from Spotmau.com. As it happens their software is on sale this weekend. I also bought a decent sized external hard drive. You burn the data recovery program to a CD and your computer will boot off that instead. It sets up a barebones operating system that will allow you to move files off your hard drive onto the external drive. Hopefully you know where all that stuff is on your drive.
After you have "rescued" all those files you need then you can breathe easy and start looking at rebuilding windows.
My desktop XP died around Thanksgiving. Luckily, I had just ordered a new Win7.
I had partitioned my XP drive in to C: for the OS and D: for the data. The C: partition was the one that apparently died. I did try to connect another drive but it would not work, so I think it was a compound problem with the motherboard/controller and/or drive.
I ordered a IDE 2 USB cable. It cost about $20. I was able to access all of the data on the D: partition but nothing from the C:
Those IDE 2 USB cables have several adapters for various drive connection sizes. Note that it took a long while for my new Win7 to read the data on the drive.
I should add one thing. 32Gb memory sticks are reasonable now, even for us who are unemployed and underfunded. For between $20 and $25 you can backup a LOT of data. You just have to be willing and able to do it regularly. Assuming that it is a recoverable hardware or software problem.
What is the Brand, Model and age of the laptop? The operating system?
Frankly, the easier one to fix is a computer going bad because a decent computer shop can copy a good HDD onto a new / used computer of equal or better capacity. Cost you some money, yes, but you can call various computer shops in your area and ask if they can see if your HDD is still good. Hint: If you heard strange or grinding noises prior to your Blue Screen of Death (BSD) most likely it is bad HDD.
If it is a bad HDD, your hurt just got exponential without backup. There are HDD recovery shops that can copy contents from a bad HDD to a new replacement. They take long time frames (you ship your HDD to them) and cost in the 4 digits and up.
You could try calling your local library and asking for local area computer clubs. Since this is a BSD, ignore the ones for Apple. Go to a meeting and throw yourself to their mercy by explaining your plight and asking if any of them could help you. There are geeks amongst us that can do wonderful things. Be prepared to promise a wonderful dinner at the best restaurant you can afford if successful as well as paying for replacement HDD. A good geek will also take the old computer to make sure that it did not cause the original damage. THIS WILL TAKE TIME!
Now, to all of those who have read this far - how safe is YOUR DATA!?!?!?
I run disk image (bootable) backups religiously on naked HDDs using external docks and then store these HDDs in my fire-resistant safe. I am never more than a week (usually less) from the last backup and I have multiple HDDs so that the week-ago backup is still in the safe while I backup.
If this seems like too much, here is a random bing search hit that rates 10 online backup services. I can NOT recommend any as I don't use any of them. Your call.
Hope that this was worth reading. Bona fides: 30+ year computer programmer and paid consultant. I have been in this place when there were none of these options and I swore (MANY TIMES) not to be there again. DO NOT THINK THAT THIS WILL NOT HAPPEN TO YOU - IT WILL!
I was having a similar problem with an older Toshiba laptop a few years ago (my first laptop, so it was a learning experience).
What fixed my problem was getting the dust bunnies out of the case.. I broke it down as much as I could used a PC safe duster.. then a can of pressurized air.. After that, I places a small USB fan near the laptop and had it blowing UNDER the laptopn (they make platforms you can use instead).
That fixed my problem, although in your case, it could be somethiung totally different... and even if what I described is the original cause, the overheating and the following shutdown (plus repair) could have corrupted lots of data on your HD.
SO... first clean it out as best as you can, and then work on reparing any damage it may have caused.
Hope you get it fixed soon ;)
Doing a google search for that particular file came up with a lot of instances of a virus that attaches itself via a 0kb file in the windows/system32/drivers folder. I used one of the many bootable/scandisks(Hirens)but did not find any such file.
Fortunately I had an external backup drive hooked to this PC and Acronis software doing an automatic backup. Unfortunately I had not turned on the ext. drive in more than a month and so any data since then was not copied.
Now, after trying several fixes, I figure I must have made things worse, and though the files are visible using the above third party utilities(outside of Windows Repair Console), the drive is now listed as "unallocated"(must have messed up the partition somewhere along the line).
Anyway, I eventually went out and bought a new hard drive and copied the(minus one month of data)to it from my backup ext. drive.
Now I am still hoping to recover the bad hard drive, with little success so far.
None of this probably helps with your issue, I only offer this(as someone else suggested)DON'T DO ANYTHING UNTIL A PROFESSIONAL HAS A CHANCE TO EVALUATE AND PROPOSE A SOLUTION...or you too may make a bad situation...worse.