done the unthinkable!

[Richp]

Hi there
Short of weeping i dont know what else to do , thought i may find advice here.

To cut a long story short, in part of my business we sell a magnetic device, rather stupidly after speaking
to a customer today i put the device in my front jeans pocket, not long after i sat down with my laptop on
my knee... yeah i know how much of an idiot am i? to work, the laptop froze and upon trying to restart i
just got a black screen.
I have now made the laptop start up but after the Viao start up screen i get another screen which says
' windows cannot start because the file c:/windows/system32/hal.dll is missing or currupt, please reinstal
this file'.
Im currently away from home, but have recovery disks at home, hopefully they will help me salvage something
from this disaster.
However should they not work, i need to know if there is anything which can be done to try and get the laptop
working and my documents etc back, incidentally the laptop is about 15 months old and only last week did i start a
back up for the first time. Which i havent anywhere like finished.
Incidentally i own a viao S5M and the magnet touched the underside of the laptop on the right hand side about a
third of the way up from the bottom. Im guessing knowing my luck this is where my hard drive is.
any help for this idiot here appreciated
Rich

[tonybeard]

On start up push F3 and select 'advanced' settings and select 'last known good config' once the lappie is working finish you back up because it is likely there is damage and it may struggle to boot up without crashing if the hard drive is damaged.

[Richp]

Hi Tony,
thanks for your swift response, unfortunatly , pressing F3 just restarts the laptop back to the Viao start up screen ..., so just running round in circles and not getting anywhere. I will be at home tomorrow eve, so i guess will have to try the recovery disks then. ? Tried pressing F3 from start too and i just end up with a black screen ..... not sounding good is it ?

[Blencogo]

Hi Richp.

Try Tapping F8 at the Vaio Screen to open the Startup Options Screen.

It is worth trying 'Last Known Good Configuration' but I suspect you have destroyed some data on your hard drive.

[tonybeard]

If Blencogos suggestion doesn't work try F2 will take you into the bios and swap the boot up order to your optical drive (g) and so it boots off your recovery disks. Either way part of the way into a recovery it lets you save data to an external drive (I needed 156 gig to rescue eveerything when I stupidly installed an old version of Alcohol 120% and it bluescreen of deathed on me attempting to set a virtual drive on vista). This handy feature which has two dialogue panes the right one being the active which lets you delete unneccessary programs and then commit to a external drive backup...good luck and keep you pockets away from the fridge door BTW a 400 gig Maxtor external drive is £90 at Maplins

[jumpsuit]

Hi There

Are you on XP or Vista?

In XP I had a similar problem once, and used something called the XP Quickboot disc.

I think this is the same one. GO Here

If that doesn't help you could try:

- going into BIOS while booting
- change the boot order to boot from CD
- insert your XP installation CD and boot again
- start the recovery console
- type your admin password
- type CHKDSK /P
- type BOOTCFG /REBUILD

[kee-lo_]

How strong is the magnet for info?

[Richp]

Hi
Kee lo
FYI the magnet was 12000 Gauss ... a 1 inch disc size.

Jump suit,
when you refer to inserting your Windows instilation disk are you refering to the one called quick boot?, as i dont have an original Windows instalation disk onlt the recovery disks my computer created.

Tony - i have tried managed to make F8 work but the boot to last known good config gives me the same error message. Tomorrow im going to go get an external drive and try the recovery ... i have read about the recovery and it says my documents should have been on my 😧 i fear they are all on my C: ... is it obvious where this dual pane screen is when i do the restoere ?

Thanks guys for all your advice so far!

Rich

[Richp]

jump suit - should i try this windows quick boot before i my viao recovery disks ?

[kee-lo_]

Oh I see, now I understand why it happened

A reformat should really sort it out though, it's just a displacement of magnetic fields on the drive.