Solved Assistance on Laptop required

[Plexx]

Hi guys, I need some help here as I am unsure if a simple rescue disk would do the trick since it seems she is unable to even load up the Bios. I will quote what my friend said:

Sony Vaio, OS: Windows Vista, froze all of a sudden and I pressed shut down. Wanted to turn it on again, the screen went black for like 5 min and this error message came up. No matter what I press: Enter or Esc, it restarts and shows the same things all over again.
Tried F5, F8 and F12, nothing works, can't restore, can't enter safe mode, Bios, anything.

 

[Plexx]

No recovery disk. She is able to get someone to provide her with a windows 7 home premium 32 bit.

Also it seems only F2 works but brings a setup. I am asking more info on that F2 menu.

 

[Dieselman]

You cannot use someone elses Windows 7 cd unless she has her own code or the Windows 7 install license is good for multiple pc's. F2 is the bios. If she can get into her bios then the OS needs to be repaired. If she cannot repair it then she will need to reformat it. Be sure that the HDD is spinning.

 

[Plexx]

OK, F2 brings to BIOS.

I can take it from here guys. Thanks a lot for the help. So to make sure, if she installs Windows 7 as a Custom she can get the files right? Or a dual boot would be recommended?

 

[Plexx]

Thats the Bios. looks like something is missing but well at least she can get into the bios.

Any ideas to access recovery partition? she has the recovery partition (just got it confirmed).

was it F8?

 

[Dieselman]

What would be missing? Does seem as though the cd rom drive is missing. Can you boot from a rescue cd like Kaspersky? F10 according to Google searches is the recovery partition. Dual boots are never a good idea unless its Linux. When you do a custom install of 7 or an upgrade install it will backup your files to Windows Old. But if she is able to mount the recovery partition then most likely she will loose all her data.

 

[Plexx]

I was thinking of CD Rom as well.

Well she managed to find a friend with

I was not that keen on a dual boot of windows, so I asked her about any friends that are a bit tech orientated and one of them uses Linux so he will use a Ubuntu Live disk, boot it up and back up all the stuff and then install Win 7 after she buys it later on today.

I am unable to touch the laptop since its farm from where I am at the moment.

Thanks a lot for the help guys!

 

[Dieselman]

Your welcome. But if the cd rom drive is no good she will not be able to install 7 in the first place.

 

[Plexx]

Her friend is going to use an external dvd rom just in case as he also suspects what we both suspected.

Her bios does allow boot from external.

 

[Valentin N]

Her friend is going to use an external dvd rom just in case as he also suspects what we both suspected.

Her bios does allow boot from external.

This is slightly offtopic but might be useful. Comodo Backup has something called called mirror disk/partition (CB --> Backup --> Custom Backup --> mirror disk/partition). It's similar to RAID1. I have asked the developer if it safe (I will try it myself and see and come back to tell you). I don't know how it really works but is show copy every single byte from the HDD that is in use to the wanted disk.

This can be good if you have more than one HDD (the other one will be like a true replacement) or if you transfer everything from a HDD to SSD.

Regards

 

[Dieselman]

Comodo Backup has to be already installed to work. But Comodo Backup has no recovery cd so its worthless. The topic of disk imaging can be discussed once this problem is rectified. Having a backup on the same partition is never a good idea cause when your HDD fails your data will be gone.

 

[Valentin N]

Comodo Backup has to be already installed to work. But Comodo Backup has no recovery cd so its worthless. The topic of disk imaging can be discussed once this problem is rectified. Having a backup on the same partition is never a good idea cause when your HDD fails your data will be gone.

of what I understand you make a copy of the wanted disk/partition so you should be able to put the other disk in and you should be able to work like before, (with missing file that were added after performing mirror disk/partition). The developer has done on personal computers with success. If I ever buy a second HDD I will try report.

 

[Dieselman]

Comodo Backup is not the same as a complete disk imaging product. The only proper way to be sure everything is transferred when doing a system image is by using a system image product. If you want to transfer everything from one drive to another then you need to clone your drive. Comodo Backup does not feature disk imaging or disk cloning. Therefore it is irrelevant to this topic.

 

[Plexx]

I am waiting for an update from my friend. She took the laptop over to her friend and went out to buy a Win 7 Home premium 32 bits.

 

[Dieselman]

Ok thanks for the heads up. The external cd drive may not work cause previous time I tried you need to install the driver first.

 

[Plexx]

I just got confirmation that the CD drive is working. For some reason wasn't detected properly on the Bios. After resetting to default settings in Bios, a restart and showed the drive! That's one issue resolved at least.

 

[Dieselman]

Very cool. At least now she should be able to insert a Windows 7 cd and do a custom install of Windows 7 and not an upgrade. If she wants maybe make a Kaspersky Rescue CD and use it to backup her stuff to be safe. But as I previously stated prior to installing Windows 7 a backup of your old data will be automatically created.

 

[Plexx]

He is actually backing the stuff up from Ubuntu. But I told him to install a back up utility and teach how to use it.

Guess its one laptop solved!

Thanks everyone for the help.

Off topic: wasn't Comodo Backup with bugs? I remember Heffed saying something about that...

 

[Dieselman]

Windows 7 has a backup feature as well as Vista did. Comodo Time Machine was extremely buggy. Windows 7 Backup and Recovery is just fine and extremely easy to use. Just be sure to create a bootable cd as it tells yo to do so.

 

[Deleted member 178]

My only concern with Windows Backup was the size of the image (pretty big IMO) but except that it work very well.

 

[Dieselman]

An external drive should be at least 200GB larger then your internal drive. So why should size be an issue. For me the difference between Easeus and Windows 7 is only about 30MB. No big deal to me but I also use both. The female who own this laptop is also a beginner therefore I was recommending something very easy. You need to think of the user and not yourself or your opinions.