[Hey Elwood]

I'm so angry. My laptop just died and all my work is on the hard drive. I probably lost all my work...and I had some pretty kick butt photos (at least I think so) Thank god I still have a good number of orginals on my cards. Pray that I can fix my hard drive and recover everything. Of course it would be just my luck to lose everything and have to spend a bunch of money on a new laptop...money I don't have because I have a baby on the way. This sucks.

[Gooshin]

define "died"

did it burn out, did it fall and crack? You HD is probably fine.

[Hey Elwood]

When I try to boot up my laptop I get the Dell boot up screen where you can press F2 for Setup and F12 for Boot. Once it gets past that I get a blinking progress bar and that's it. It won't go any futher. My only prayer is that it's a bad sector on start up and all the information is still there.

[xjjohnno]

It sounds like you could use a bootable utility disc like Hirens to diagnose what's broken. Hirens will also have data recovery utilities you can use to transfer to a usb connected HD.

[daacon]

Indeed - well it could be hard drive , it could also be many other things. If you are comfortable taking the Hard Drive out , try putting it the freezer for about 30 minutes (in an ziplock back would be fine) then put it back in and try and boot. I have rescued a few Hard drives this way - you may get one more boot out of it (then if you do get whatever you need off of it quickly) or time to pull some favors from the tech savy friends if you have any. Good Luck.

[tybeck]

All hope might not be lost. There are some simple things to try before spending too much time and money. You don't say but I'm assuming that you're running Windows.

I've non-booting issues be everything from an all out drive hardware failure ($$$ to fix) to just plain old software. Software is usually best addressed by trying to boot the PC off another disk and seeing if you can read your data. Hirens disk is a good idea to test booting and diagnosing the problem. You can find iso images for this if you hunt around a bit. Another option is a Linux LiveCD distribution called KNOPPIX. You can boot to it, mount your internal drive, and try and read your data (say onto a USB hard drive). Reformat the drive, reinstall the OS, and cross your fingers.

In any case see if you can get your files off first and then worry about about any hardware or software issues. If the laptop will boot off a CD the changes are very good that you won't have to replace the whole laptop and its a software issue with the drive or you'll only have to buy a new hard drive.

[forensicscientist]

I'd try sticking the drive in an external, usb enclosure. Then see if another computer can read it. If so, copy everything quickly. Then troubleshoot the drive.......or throw it away. HD's are cheap. Data recovery is not so.

Good luck.

[Tom S.]

forensicscientist hit the nail on the head. Chances are you haven't lost anything except something in the boot system. Most likely by hooking up the drive to another system will allow you to get your data back.

After doing that, you might try reinstalling Windows and using the repair option. The fact that you get past the Dell splash screen to the load screen indicates you have a corrupt driver.

[Urmas R.]

I agree with tybeck. Booting to a linux live CD is super easy. You can use any Linux distro. My personal preference is Mandriva (but Knoppix or Ubuntu are fine too). On the webpage you can download and burn iso image to a CD. Put that in, next time you start the PC and you have a Linux running. Now you can chech the files in various partitions. This works though only in case there is no severe harware failure...

Btw., does it make more noise or get hot? Could you boot to windows safe mode?

[ftpaddict]

I'd try sticking the drive in an external, usb enclosure. Then see if another computer can read it. If so, copy everything quickly. Then troubleshoot the drive.......or throw it away. HD's are cheap. Data recovery is not so.

Good luck.

Fastest and easiest solution. And dirt cheap. A good 2.5" USB enclosure is $12 in Romania. Chances are they're even cheaper over there.

Just be careful to get the interface right! SATA(newer) or IDE(older).

Or try to find one of those enclosures that work with both.

This one is very good:

Scythe SCUPS-2000

[Clicker]

When I try to boot up my laptop I get the Dell boot up screen where you can press F2 for Setup and F12 for Boot. Once it gets past that I get a blinking progress bar and that's it. It won't go any futher. My only prayer is that it's a bad sector on start up and all the information is still there.

If you get "whirring/scratching" sound from your HDD, then it's a bad/dying HDD but i think you may only have RAM gone bad...see if you can borrow a stick of similar RAM or let's say if you have two slots of RAM only one may have gone bad so pulling both then inserting one only and trying a restar will tell you if which stick of RAM is bad. (unless they're both bad which is unusual then try borrowing a stick)

[Denis]

One thing you could try is to take the battery off, wait a few seconds and put it back in. Some time it is the issue. We have many laptops at my workplace which have had this very similar issue.

Hope it helps.

So did you find out what's wrong with the laptop?