HP 550 won't start.Any help would be great please.

josha007

Hi all.I have a HP550 laptop which all of a sudden isn't starting up properly.Instead of loading up to the password screen of windows,it just goes blank and stays that way.I turned the laptop off then on again and it gives me the option of starting up a 'laptop repair' or 'start windows normally'.The repair takes about 20 mins to load and will put my hard drive to its factory state,which I don't want.

Does anyone know what cold be wrong and what I can do?I'm quite handy with computers but I'm stuck with this one.Is there anyway I can backup my hard drive without getting into windows?

Thanks in advance everyone.Josh

Browntoa

windows Version ??

cannot get into safe mode by hittng F8 on boot and using system restore ??

vista recovery cd

http://neosmart.net/blog/2008/windows-vista-recovery-disc-download/

or

windows 7 recovery disk

http://neosmart.net/blog/2009/windows-7-system-repair-discs/

S0litaire

Do you have a Windows 7 CD?
If you stick that in and select the repair option it will do a check of the drive and repair anything it finds...

If not then pressing f8 during boot should give you a menu where you can start in safe mode.

Sounds like you need to give the drive hard drive a scan / check...

josha007

Forgot about F8,duh!!

Just trying that now.But I went to try selecting the start windows normally option,and it just went to the hard disk recovery program.Which says it will put my hard disk to its factory state and erase everything.Weird.

It's Windows Vista.Is that a link to make a boot cd?Sorry I'm on my iPhone at the moment.

Safe Mode looks like it's loading the recovery program too

S0litaire

eek!
Vista! urgh! Hate to say it but get Win7 ASAP!lol

(I use Ubuntu Linux. ^_^)

josha007

This doesn't look good.Any option I try when pressing f8 just loads up,very slowly,the recovery program.It won't let me do anything else.

I'm slightly worried and not sure what else to do.Would the Vista recovery cd maybe solve the problem?

josha007

How do I know which version of Vista I'm running? 32 bit or 64 bit? I can't get into Windows at all remember.Thanks.Josh

josha007

Mmm, not looking good this. I've tried to do a restore CD for the laptop, but once again it just loads up, again very slowly, the hard disk recovery program. Does anyone have an idea what could have happened to the laptop? Is it a memory thing, or the hard drive being corrupt?

I'm stuck. Thanks.Josh

closed

hard drive corrupt.

If you don't want to restore it to factory settings because you will lose data, you could either buy a 2.5 inch usb caddy, and copy to another machine, or download a linux live boot cd to copy your data off.