Lost OS

xstitchcrazee

A total Dumb Blonde question here.

My youngest son (17) has totally managed to lose his Windows 7 OS from his laptop, all he will admit to is he put his laptop into standby and when he went to open it up again it wouldn't boot up.

My middle son who knows his way around, tried to find out what he'd done and got nowhere. He took out the hardrive and inspected it through two other machines and there is no sign of any OS. He has never seen anything like it before. The only thing he can find is a partition with drivers on.

Now before I start going hell for leather at him for being a total imbecile (sp) to wrecking a five month old machine how on earth could he have possibly done this?

Please remember when you answer my opening sentence, it needs to be in idiot terms :rotfl:

RussJK

Get your middle son to use testdisk to fix the partition table.
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

closed

if nothing came on screen, the first paragraph symptom sounds like a resume from hibernation failure, press power button for 10 seconds to switch off and back on.

if it really doesn't boot, factory restore it

xstitchcrazee

Thank you Russ I'll pass that info over.

debitcardmayhem

closed wrote: »

if nothing came on screen, the first paragraph symptom sounds like a resume from hibernation failure, press power button for 10 seconds to switch off and back on.

if it really doesn't boot, factory restore it

Not necessarily, if the son number whatever has left in a USB device without a boot sector it will just be blank flashing cursor at the top left , it could be anything as long as the lappy is looking for bootsectors from USB.

mr_fishbulb

RussJK wrote: »

Get your middle son to use testdisk to fix the partition table.
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

Is that like a free version of SpinRite?

RussJK

mr_fishbulb wrote: »

Is that like a free version of SpinRite?

Um, well it doesn't have any magical features like Spinrite. Last time I had to use it was when someone wrecked their partition tables with Easeus Partition manager, and the partition repair was pretty straightforward under testdisk.

Best freeware tool I've found for file recovery as well (finds far more than Recuva even on its best settings when I've tested them side by side).

xstitchcrazee

closed - switching it off like that was the first thing tried, cursor blinks for two maybe three blinks and disappears.

debitcardmayhem

xstitchcrazee wrote: »

closed - switching it off like that was the first thing tried, cursor blinks for two maybe three blinks and disappears.

And... is there a USB device plugged in ? or a SD card

xstitchcrazee

No there wasn't and isn't.

debitcardmayhem

xstitchcrazee wrote: »

No there wasn't and isn't.

OK sorry, but I have seen situations like that before, I just re-read post 1 and noticed other son had tried the disk elsewhere, what did he use, it may help others to diagnose.