Geek Squad was no help...Can you help me get my laptop working again?

Question

One of the bright blue error screens popped up on my computer--one of the ones that says "If this is the first time you've seen this message, restart your computer."  I had been playing a game that takes FOREVER to load, so I figured that there had been some malfunction of the game's programming.  I was just reaching to restart my computer when it flashed something like "Preparing virtual memory dump" and then it shut down, because it had been on awhile and overheated.  After it cooled down and I could get it to turn back on, It loaded and said  "Operating System not found".

When I took it to the Geek Squad, they looked at it for LITERALLY two seconds and said that dust had clogged the fan and damaged the motherboard, and there was no way to retrieve my data.  Furthermore, he said it would be about $450 in repairs and I should just get a new computer.  

I'm not buying what they're selling.

So can you help me?  How can I get my laptop working again, and get my data restored?

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

The existing installation in the drive is gone.If the data in the hard drive are important to you then get this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812232002
It never failed me.You can hook up the damaged drive from your laptop to another computer and retrieve your data. After you do that ,try formating the drive.If you can ,that means there is no physical damage to the drive and you can probably use it again.

Anonymous · Answer

Would help to know make of laptop and what OS you are running.  Sounds like Geek Squad.  First make sure there is not a CD in the drive.  When you first start the system go into the BIOS and make sure the boot device is set to the hard drive.  When you save and reboot, start hitting the F8 key and and come up in safe mode.  If it still can't find the OS, go back into the BIOS and set the boot device to CD.  Install the recovery CD and reboot.  Try a recovery setting.  If the CD is not available, you will have to buy a new CD and do a rebuild.  It will probably lose all data.  One way is to remove the hard drive, put in an enclosure and copy data to another system.

Anonymous · Answer

If you can turn it on and it makes it past the BIOS and tries to boot windows and gives you an "Operating System not found" error, my guess is that Geek Squad was wrong in their diagnosis. If you have the operating system restore cds that came with your computer, you could try using those to restore your computer.

Retrieving your data might be difficult. Operating System not found could also mean that the hard drive failed, but not definitely.

Most if not all modern computers have built in temperature sensors that automatically shut down the computer when temperatures get up to a certain degree to prevent heat damage, so damage from heat is not likely, although it is possible. 

My suggestion is to boot from the operating system restore cd and try the restore from there and let us know what happens.

lchasser · Answer

See if you can bring it to a computer geek who has a Linux CD.

Tell him your problem and see if he can repair the 'Master Boot Record'  MBR

Very simple but does take about 45 min to an hour. Data will not be hurt.

Sarge

Anonymous · Answer

get dust buster or whatever made toi get rid of dust for appliances and use it. Then try loading windows CD. Try to boot in safe mode F8 repeatedly on startup

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Geek Squad was no help...Can you help me get my laptop working again?

5 Answers