help with messed up laptop please

always_comping

My mate had a virus on his laptop and he deleted some files, when he tried to restart it all he gets is a blank screen and it wont go past the boot up bit. He's on vista, if anyone could help it would be appreciated, thanks.

Orkatec

If he has the original discs he could try a repair but this is risky as he could end up deleting everything.
Best plan is to remove the hard drive put it in another computer or put it in an external usb caddy and copy over all his cherished files.
Do a full virus/malware scan on the disc first.
After put it back and reinstall windows.

Had to do this just last week.

Browntoa

depending on the make/model laptop there may be a restore paritition hidden (Dells/Acers etc have them)

always_comping

Thanks, he tried to reinstall windows but the laptop wont do anything, just stays on the black screen, thanks.

dg1dd1ngs_2

Can he boot it into safe mode?

always_comping

nope, it wont do anything

dg1dd1ngs_2

Found this on a help forum:

*Take out the battery,
*Remove main supply,
*Hold power button down for 30 secs,
*Put only power supply in, do not put battery in
*Turn laptop on
*Put the battery in.

Gotta be worth a try?...

Orkatec

A friend of mine reinstalled windows but reformatted his HD in the process I used a program called convar undeleter to get his photos back it also retrieves some documents, also used it on a failed HD to some success.
You need to put the HD in a caddy or in another computer to do this.
I got CONVAR off the net free.

James

always_comping

tried the battery thing, didnt work, thanks for help though, the laptop is advent, model number rubbed off