automatic updates killed my laptop, now only black screen !?

[wraith]

Windows 7 or if your adventurous 8. You probably only have 2gb ram so it will probably be a bit of a slug.

 

[greenacc]

Well still no joy with my trusty old dell. IT mate tried all the commands he could think of with no xuccess, and today brother tried to download all the fotos with his hard drive reader but the other computercwe were using could not detect any files on the hard drive from my dell! Strange thing wasthat hdd reader was only showing 8GB of capacity on the hdd but it is ctually a 320Gb disc ??
So now i have nfi what has happened. Thinking about just going ordering a new hdd online and sticking that in to get it going again , assuming that would work? ( and if so does it matter if i get a say 500gb and faster hdd with larger cache ?)
I have not tried ubuntu yet, is there still a chance that could work ?

 

[Bomber R8]

Dell laptop was working fine until a few days ago. It installed a few automatic updates on last shutdown, then next day we turn it on and it just goes to a black screen ?
Tried doing the self test by pressing f2 but it finds no fault ....

Any ideas ?

Had the same thing happen to my Dell XPS M1730 a few months ago, won't even load into BIOS 99 times out of 100. I have an Acronis System Image from 24/05/2010 so I loaded that in and everything works great. Obviously there are 3+ years of updates that want to install. All I can figure is at least one of those is causing the issue. I'm about to load the image again and see if I can isolate the culprit, but same as you, all my restore points went MIA and System Repair does exactly F**k All.....

If all else fails I'll get the files so need off the second drive, buy a new HDD and a fresh copy of Windows 7 and start again.

 

[Bomber R8]

Took it apart and reseated everything and removed BIOS battery (which took less than an hour and I'm far from knowledgeable!), switched it back and and it booted. Ran a self test and came up with optical drive error: 2000-0147. I'm starting to think because BIOS is set up to boot from the DVD drive before the HDD this is where the problem is coming from. Still running memory tests at the moment so maybe I got off light?

 

[greenacc]

Geez louise, last night i was educating myself on laptops and also came across the topic of the bios battery!!! I was wondering how long they last as mine is 5 years old. Let me know you you go. I think the bios battery is under tha ram yes?

 

[Pollushon]

You'll know if the CMOS battery is dead. BIOS won't hold time or any settings, reverting back to manufacture date and defaults. If this isn't happening, I doubt it's that.

Some points:

Using a HDD caddy probably won't yield you the same results as plugging your drive directly into the correct interface, due to conversion and that most caddy chip-sets are cheap and simplistic compared to a motherboards south-bridge.
What OS was the PC running that you looked at the HDD on?
Yes you could just grab another HDD and jam that in then reinstall windows.
Yes, Linux could (and should) absolutely work live boot as could any other live boot distro unless the HDD is buggered or the data is gone.

 

[st3r3otyp3]

............................

 

[wraith]

Spotmau Powersuite: Boot Up Any Crashed Windows Computer, 5 Star Award PC Tool

Seems legit...not. Not every one is a computer tech so please don't suggest crap programs like that.

 

[Low_VX_Taxi]

Just a quick suggestion, maybe use a linux recovery disk (I.E Knoppix Knoppix Linux Boot CD, Download Disk and Documents, Discuss, Get Help ) in your dell, if you don't see your windows partition (remember there will be the knoppix partition, usually a recovery partition and the partition which windows is on) you may need to take it to a reputable repair shop to do data recovery.

Worse case there is data recovery centres that can recover ANYTHING but for a price such as http://www.drcaustralia.com/

Honestly the more you play around the more damage you may do, it may be best to bite the bullet and take it to a reputable computer tech.

 

[Low_VX_Taxi]

Spotmau Powersuite: Boot Up Any Crashed Windows Computer, 5 Star Award PC Tool

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Gotta love google.....