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

[jumpsuit]

Hi Yes - Try the quickboot disc first.

[Richp]

Hi guys

This morning i have been and bought an external drive, have tried the quick boot disk, but i still seem to get the same error message still and ... started the vio recovery untility but it does say that this wizard does not let you back up data? so i have cancelled it for now, TONY how do i get this dual screen thing you referded to ?

Some one else suggested i caddy the drive in another computer ? but that all my files will be lost as i had a windows account set up with a password?

[littlebucko]

hi m8 go to the support tab top of this screen then go to downloads then put in your laptop details and then go to drivers and hay presto your original laptop programs drivers and hardware are all in 1 file that you download

[jumpsuit]

Hi there

Try looking for something called ERD Commander.

I believe that it can sill be found out there.

[Richp]

thanks jumpsuit looking for this programme now, it appears microsoft have purchased it and removed it from down load .. will keep hunting .!!!! looks like what i need tho !!

[jumpsuit]

[kee-lo_]

There's a handy application called NTFS4DOS which allows you to copy all your files to the external drive within DOS, as usually NTFS cannot be read in DOS.

http://www.freewarefiles.com/program_9_90_11100.html

[Richp]

There's a handy application called NTFS4DOS which allows you to copy all your files to the external drive within DOS, as usually NTFS cannot be read in DOS.

http://www.freewarefiles.com/program_9_90_11100.html

Would i save this to a Cd and inset it upon start us as i dont know how else to get into dos, and i cant get into windows

[rainerBischoff]

try using spinrite 6.0 from grc.com. It is a hard disk reco ery system that can sometimes restore all contents completely by using statistical wizardry on the corrupt data it has read freom the drive at a low level very near to the hardware. It is definitely well worth the $89 fee for downloading.

Good luck!
Rainer

[kee-lo_]

It would have to be on a bootable CD