Help for my daughter's laptop?
 

The following is an excerpt from an e-mail that I received from my first amendment this evening:
She has a HP laptop, and runs Windows XP.
There is no telling what she got into on the internet, so my guess is she picked up a bug. Thoughts? Recommendations?

How long did she let it cool down? I've had a laptop that needed several days to get itself in order. Maybe moving this to Computers will get more responses.

Knowing her...probably about 10 seconds.
And...DUH! I'm half asleep, I thought it was in "Computers". :rolleyes:

BOR, I'd first try to better understand what she means by "won't turn on." Is Windows corrupted and won't boot or is the thing not even powering up? Does she have a restore CD or even a floppy she can try to boot from?

If it truly isn't powering up then she's probably out of luck for a few days. Quickest way to get her files would be to pull the hard drive and put it in another computer or an external USB/FireWire case.

Bad computer! Baaaad!

Where does she go to college? Unless it's some crazy arts school, there's bound to be heaps of nerds somewhere. She might have to take a trek to some nerd-infested area, but they'll help her out. Seriously, this is such a vague and tough problem to diagnose over the internet. It would be best if she did a little looking and found someone on campus to give her a hand.

How did she go about shutting it off? It's confusing that she went from what sounds like IE script errors to not turning back on, maybe she did get virus pwned.

Cyrnel has teh right idea with the HDD ..... but laptop HDD's are 2.5in and follow another specificiation...

If it's something that's serious (not an easy fix, nasty virus, etc.), and if it powers up, but doesn't boot, have her download and burn a copy of Knoppix, then run it (if she's no good with computers, have her find a geek to do it for her). Then, if she has a web based email account (her school probably has one for her), have her email her homework and important files to herself. Then she should run her restore disk.

It's just IDE with power pins. Takes a $5 adapter to put on a desktop bus but fits nicely in external 2.5" enclosures. I'd look for one of the local geeks you mention who has the adapter or enclosure. Tomorrow won't be a good day for retail solutions.

Sounds like she's going to need to borrow notes for a few days.

She should have a restore CD somewhere... but make sure she tries to "fix" an installation, not do a fresh install. Fresh install = no more files, unless you use a recovery program, and those aren't guaranteed to work. If there's anything really vital on there, she could buy an external 2.5" enclosure and transfer files to a friend's computer until hers can be fixed. While campus computer stores likely won't have them, they're pretty easy to find online. Something like this.

And yeah, I second the nerd notion. Doesn't she have any nerdy friends? And if not, what kind of child did you raise?

As mikesty stated,
there's usually a tech support/help group for any students that have problems with the pcs. With this situation, it's best tackled hands-on [pardon the pun, I couldn't resist :D ] with a variety of problems that could have happened.

Script errors ? It's possible that she might have gotten a nasty virus and/or spyware on the computer already, especially if she's running Internet Explorer [with activeX]. Make sure she has protection [Firefox, spybot, anti-virus, etc.] in the future, so you don't receive anymore phone calls at 1 AM near mid-terms because she had a paper due. :p

Catcha back on the flipside,
will. [fellow college frosh...hint...hint....]

PS - Getting a USB key is convenient for transporting assignments from labs to personal pcs and what not. She can buy one of those [anywhere from $20 to $100, depending on the size, though unless she has a class with video or photography, a 256 MB would probably be enough]. In this case, if she had the assignments stored [or backed up] on that, she can take the work and finish it in the library or pc lab.

First of all, have her calm down and breathe. (Heh, I've had messages from my sister like that on the answering machine.)

Second of all, unless the HDD is dead, the info should probably still be there. Using a Restore disk will probably WIPE OUT THE HARD DRIVE!!! You don't want to do that...yet.

Try booting to a bootable linux cd such as knoppix. If you don't want to try this yourself, try the college geek-squad as others have mentioned.

I recently fixed a laptop for someone's daughter here at work. I was able to boot to the CD and move everything to a external HDD via USB, run the restore disk and replace the documents.

Bottom line: there's still hope.