Computer Rescue...

Baggy, here are the details for the laptop rescue.

The Beginning of the End
Friday night, I thought I'll turn on the laptop to watch a DVD. Windows refused to boot up. Restart in save mode: nothing. Restart in save mode with command promt: nothing. Try to reinstall windows: the windows install disc doesn't recognise any preexisting windows install.

Something is VERY wrong...

Day 1: Roller Coaster
It's great to have a friend who knows what he's doing and have rescued data from a dead harddisc before. So I took the laptop to his place. We tried using a Linux live CD... can't see the directory. We tried almost everything: can't see the directory. We got the harddisc out and plug it into a USB HDD case: Windows can't even see the disc.

We've decided to use a file recovery tool to get data out. The took got almost everything else... besides anything from my PhD folder.

*bang head of wall*

We then decided to recover any lost files (or lost segments of files). and estimated time was 600 minutes... We've decided to leave it for the night, and see what happen the next day.

Day 2: The situation sinks in
So all the files that it pulled out was the Matlab help file segments... NOT helpful. And after we gave up, we try to reformat the drive to reinstall Windows... That's when it happens: the disc won't even reformat.

Yup. That's when we realise the harddisc is deader than we thought.

So... we gave up. Completely.

The End of the Beginning
So, that's the beginning or a battle to try to get a decent laptop. I'll have to go into work today, tell them what happened (and report on what I've found as well), and talk to my supervisor to see about getting the laptop fixed (hopefully: a new harddisc. And fix up a whole lot of other problems with it)

If all goes well: I want a week of stress leave. *sigh*