[xor-logic]

The title of the question pretty much says it all. My 5-month-old puppy got tangled in my laptop's power cord, pulled the laptop off the table and onto the floor, where it landed flat on its bottom. When I first picked up the laptop, the screen image looked slightly duplicated, with the duplicate being slightly offset from the normal display.

Praying that the screen wasn't broken, I manually powered it down, then back on. I got my wish - the Gateway logo splashed across the screen crisp and clear. However, immediately after that I got:

Quote

Disk Read Error Occurred. Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart."

No amount of restarting, cursing, praying, stomping, storming or tantrum-throwing gets me past that screen.

So, to the point, what would likely cause this error after a physical shock (is my drive f*cked?) and, were I to have it repaired, what am I likely looking at here in terms of data and money?

EDIT: I of course tried holding down f8 to get to the options screen. Only thing that happened was a shrieking beep every time I touched the key.

This post has been edited by xor-logic: 24 February 2011 - 11:50 PM

[no2pencil]

Flip the laptop over, look for the hard drive caddy cover. Should be an icon of a disk like they show to represent a database.

Open that cover. Reseat the hard drive. It may have just come disconnected from the SATA/IDE connector, depending on how it's attached.

xor-logic, on 25 February 2011 - 01:45 AM, said:

EDIT: I of course tried holding down f8 to get to the options screen. Only thing that happened was a shrieking beep every time I touched the key.

F8 is an option for Windows. This failure is at the point before the MBR has even been discovered. You are getting beeps because it is the job of the Operating System to clear the keyboard buffer, & you've filled the buffer with F8 key presses. The been indicates the buffer is full.

[xor-logic]

Ok, tried that. There's only a single large panel (aside from the battery) on the backside, found the drive pretty readily under it. Slid it out, slid it back in snug (I think that's what you meant, right?). Unfortunately, I still get the error. I'm going to open it up again and have a look over the connections.

[no2pencil]

I would next take the drive out & try it on another system with a USB converter.

If that still doesn't work, you may just need a new drive. You may be lucky enough to get away with the following :

Assuming you use the USB converter on another windows system, right click my computer, select manage, select Disk Management (it's under Storage), & see if you can see the device, but with no drive letter assigned. If that's the case you know the PCB is still working, & communicating at the I/O level. I would throw it on a Linux system at this point. It may just need the file system &/or partition table corrected. Unfortunately I don't know of any Windows tools to correct those items. If it doesn't have a drive letter assigned, it's SOL on Windows, again just from what I know. I'm sure it's fixable but don't know of the Windows tools to do it.

However, if it doesn't show up there, you may have larger problems with the drive.

[xor-logic]

I don't have a USB converter. Are there any other things I can try? My wife has the exact same laptop (bought the two at the same time), tempted to try swapping out the drives, but really scared of bricking hers too.

[no2pencil]

I would try her hard drive in your laptop. That will dead bang tell you that the drive is dead, if hers works fine in your laptop.

[xor-logic]

no2pencil, on 25 February 2011 - 07:33 AM, said:

I would try her hard drive in your laptop.

Is there ANY way I can fuck this up? And I do mean ANY. Is there ANY thing that can happen while I'm putting her drive into my computer that will leave me with two busted computers instead of one?

[no2pencil]

Of course. If you are careless with the screw driver, drop screws into the laptop... sure anything can go wrong. As long as you put the drive in carefully, you'll be fine.

A bit of advice, remove the battery when working on the laptops. You don't want to accidentally turn it on while your hands are in the proverbial cookie jar

[calvinthedestroyer]

Find a nice area to work on the laptops (Without carpet)

Take your time, Touch something metal that is grounded to discharge yourself. I always hold the drives by their sides only touching the metal and not the circuit board.

If your wife's drive works and yours does not, then you know its the drive. If you need data from your drive, you can bring it to a data recovery place to have them try and retrieve the data.

Hopefully it's just a corrupted partition.

[xor-logic]

The wife has vetoed fiddling with, removing, or touching her hard drive and, well, it IS her hard drive.

But it's not all bad. She's getting fed up with how slow her computer's been running, so I'm making some changes and downloading some better software (Firefox, Avast) while she's at work. With the new changes, I should be able to make do with borrowing hers until I can afford to do something with mine or get a new one.

She probably won't let me download an IDE though (again, it IS her computer). Just this morning she got upset because I had downloaded a little over 1GB of stuff.

Thanks for all your help and suggestions though guys. Once I can, I'll probably grab a usb converter [enclosure?] and try hooking it up to her laptop.

[no2pencil]

xor-logic, on 27 February 2011 - 03:22 AM, said:

With the new changes, I should be able to make do with borrowing hers until I can afford to do something with mine or get a new one.

Let me know if price becomes an issue. Feel free to shoot me a PM.