Lost OS

xstitchcrazee

He used an external case and plugged it in to his mac and also their sisters laptop which is the same as the dead one. Which without looking at either I can only say it's a Lenovo. On both it showed 4 partitions 3 were empty and the fourth had as I said earlier was named Lenovo and had things like the drivers in, but he couldn't find the OS anywhere.

closed

nothing at all comes on screen apart from a blinking cursor? no bios screen, no primary hard disk error?

did you remove the battery?

stilltheone

If there is no important data to save, why not run a Factory Restore or a clean install?

xstitchcrazee

closed - pressing f12 brings the 'set up' up is that right?

No primary hard disk error?

yes the battery was removed.

stilltheone - unfortunately there is/was college course work that he had been working on and hadn't backed up to his external hard drive before he put it into stand by, I don't know how much work he had done.

closed

so if you remove the battery completely, then remove power cord, the put power cord back in, still leaving the battery out, the bios splash screen comes up, then you get nothing but a flashing cursor?

What happens if you press F8 at boot, what is the model of laptop

xstitchcrazee

older son isn't here to help, but I've just removed battery and powered it up, nothing happens when I press f8 the only thing that happens is the Lenovo boot up screen with the options for f2 to enter set up and f12 for boot selection menu.

It is a Lenovo B550 and was running Windows 7 Home Prem OA

stilltheone

How is it going with the TestDisk Live CD?

xstitchcrazee

My older son hasn't been home yet to try the testdisk life yet and I am not confident enough to do it myself.

RussJK

Just leave it to your son. It's something that a slow approach is best, as the nothing will change just by leaving it alone but plenty can change by doing the wrong thing.