:( on haitus until further notice
hopefully not for very long.

stupid laptop has royally shat itself. Am borrowing mum's. getting a new one in a few days :(

Am very upset and frustrated as have lost major essays and speeches due this and next week. Have exams in two weeks. Bad bad baaaaaaaaaad time for this to happen.

Love you all. If you have any ideas how to burn my laptop - tell me now!
(Poppet some assembly required., Tue 19 May 2009, 11:14, 12 replies, latest was 16 years ago)

What actually happened to it?
Is the hardware shagged, or has Windows bitten the dust?

If it's a software/OS thing, I may be able to help.
( Labia Majora You keep on talking but it makes no sense at all, Tue 19 May 2009, 11:16, Reply)

Sucks
Couldn't come at a worse time - hope it's all sorted soon! You should be able to get the stuff off the old though reletivly easily - just take out the hard drive and put it in a USB caddy. Any decent computer shop should be able to do this for you if you don't have a clue what I'm babbling on about.

Don't burn your old one, gives off lots of nasty smoke. Shoot it instead (after taking out the hard drive!)
(Potty Jag har smör i min rumpspringa, Tue 19 May 2009, 11:19, Reply)

Not only that but remember to try
putting the hard drive in a 2.5" enclosure to see if you can get any data back easily.

EDIT: Beaaten to it.
(porkylips looks better as the sun goes down., Tue 19 May 2009, 11:19, Reply)

Aye, hope everything works well for you.
Hopefully you should be able to recover your data unless you've had a head crash in which case... oh shit. Hope everything works out ok for you.
( jim_bob can herd cats., Tue 19 May 2009, 11:21, Reply)

Ubuntu boot disk and an external HD
+ Lots of peeps here who can help. It'll be ok :-)
(MrOli is ugly, but in the morning you will be sober, Tue 19 May 2009, 11:23, Reply)

it's the whole thing
I've taken the hdd out and run it through the caddy to try and save stuff, Windows is glitching and it just doesn't want to run. The screen is going all weird - kinda flickering?


It's just dying a painful and badly timed death.
(Poppet some assembly required., Tue 19 May 2009, 11:31, Reply)

The hard drive
Long shot - put it in a plastic bag, and freeze it overnight. It sounds stupid, but you should be able to get about 10 minutes in which you can pull files off to another computer.

Sounds like there is some sort of internal power problem with the laptop, but I'm no expert.
(Potty Jag har smör i min rumpspringa, Tue 19 May 2009, 11:34, Reply)

Hmmm
Have you tired accessing the data on the drive using an operating system that isn't booting from the drive in question?

You might be able to use a live CD (as somebody else suggested) to access the data you want (if it isn't corrupted), move it to a USB pen and go from there.

Of course you'll want to scan the contents of your USB pen with a decent anti-virus before you use it on other machines.
( Captain V, Tue 19 May 2009, 11:35, Reply)

have done both of these suggestions before
sadly no luck this time. I've been having problems with it for a while.

I had a bit of a panic attack when I realised it'd finally properly shat itself! Dad's doing his best (ex - IBM technician) but I'm going to get a new one in the next few days (while wincing at my bank account - cos even though I don't want to buy a new one I really have to have a working one for school).
(Poppet some assembly required., Tue 19 May 2009, 11:41, Reply)

I don't doubt you did!
It's an awful thing to happen. Hopefully your dad will get something worked out and get the data off it that you need. The only other thing I can think up is a data retreival company, but that's stupidly expensive. Fingers crossed for you. *internet hugs*
(Potty Jag har smör i min rumpspringa, Tue 19 May 2009, 11:44, Reply)

I hope your Dad manages to retrieve it for you
But regardless of whether he does I hope you never forget this experience and remember to back up your important (or at the very least irreplaceable) data regularly in future.

I've still not learnt my lessons with surge protectors yet. Or backing data up.

:edit: That sounded rather like a lecture. Sorry about that!
( Captain V, Tue 19 May 2009, 11:57, Reply)

s'ok - my own fault really.
I usually back up once every couple of months or so because I haven't (of late) been using it much for school - just fucking around on the interwebs to research stuff.
I only really started writing my stuff last friday so I knew that I should back it up this weekend.
(Poppet some assembly required., Tue 19 May 2009, 12:45, Reply)