Morag

Hi all just wanted to let you know what happened, unfortunately my husband got a leg injury at football and I wasn't able to concentrate on laptop so i took it back to the shop who diagnosed a faulty hard drivew and because it was under warrenty they replaced it . Thanks for all your help.

Ok Nev will try it tomorrow although working until 6pm so will be much later, had a couple of glasses of wine so prob best not to try anything tonight :) What does it mean unless the drive is Sata what does that refer to? how do i find that out? The other hard drive i was talking about came from another laptop on which, apparently the motherboard has gone (might open another thread about that one!) which i tried to connect to both another laptop and also a desktop, on the laptop which runs windows 7, the laptop was vista, it registered the connection but wouldn't open and on the desk top which is windows xp it didn't even show it was connected. thanks again for all the help so far Morag

Yeah realised it was a copy but that is the disc the shop left in the laptop, whether intentionally left or not I don't know!

Nev It is a dvd disc which has vista home prem written in ink on it.

Hi Back home now. Remembered there was a disc left in laptop when we got it back labelled vista home prem is that any use for us? Also we recently had another laptop with a problem which resulted in us getting the hard drive returned to us in a usb to sata enclosure would this be suitable to use for a different hard drive? Having said that I tried to connect it to another laptop today but it doesn't recognise it! Not sure what the issue is with that! Morag

Thank you both, I'm at work at the moment now so I will check on that when I get home, hopefully we will have a windows xp disc. Will come back on later this afternoon. Morag

Hi Thanks for replying, is there anyway to retrieve the data first? Also when using the recovery discs do I just put them in and the computer works it out from there? Did wonder whether I should return to shop as it is only 5 months since they looked at it? Of course they may say its a different problem. Morag

Just managed to open using safe mode with command prompt, windows boot manager has come up advising using the installation disc and then further instructions but I don't have an installation disc. It ends by saying that "windows failed to load because the system registry file is missing or corrupt. This is not the original hard drive, it was replaced in a repair shop last August so presume the recovery discs we made initially will be useless? Morag

Hi My computer won't switch on, I get the window recovery page and get the option to open in safe mode etc, when I click any of the options i just get a blank dark screen and the operating light goes off (the cylinder one) Its a Toshiba satellite L300-29x running vista. Morag

Ok thats great thanks, we already had the Norton cos I had renewed it prior the original problem, i've got a 3 license and have put it on our desktop computer anyway so its fine not going entirely to waste! Will bear this in mind when i need to renew all the other laptops, happy to leave the Avira on knowing the laptop is protected. Thanks once again :)

Hi Starbuck Got computer back,hopefully all well now. In answer to Nev I asked if it was genuine windows they had reinstalled and they said it was as they had to register the code on the base of the computer. They also installed Avira Antivir Personal, will that give adequate protection or should I reinstall the Norton? Mo

They have said it was a faulty new hard drive and are replacing it, hope thats the end of it now!

Ok thanks will let u know how we get on.

Hi had IE7 but took the upgrades and ended up with IE9! The computer won't allow us past that error message so would be unable to uninstall anything! Still the same after a switch off/on. How does the boot file get replaced? Thanks again Morag

Hi Nev, I'm sorry I thought I had replied to this post but I guess it hadn't posted properly! Thanks for all the help. His computer was going fine until today when he switched it on and got this message windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the cause. To fix the problem: 1. Insert your windows installation disc and restart your computer. 2. Choose your language settings, and then click "next". 3. Click "repair your computer". If you don't have this disc, contact your system administrator or computer manufacturer for assistance. File:\windows\system32\hal.dll Status: 0xc00000e9 Info: Windows failed to load because the HAL is missing, or corrupt. I plan to return this back to the repair shop tomorrow but wondered if you have any suggestions or thoughts.