Operating System not found & Hard-headed Sony support.

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Originally Posted by Reddman

I have to agree with Cee and Geo, your hard drive is dying. Listen to the hints and BACKUP NOW! I've seen this way too many times and I usually get the phone call when it's too late.

Good luck!

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Alright. So the fact is my hard drive is being held on by a thread. What excatly do I need to do/buy/download to backup all my files and is it possible to backup all my programs also? I do have a copy of my registry saved somewhere on my HD, (*.reg file I think...) I just don't want to have to find all those damn CDs of the programs that I had on my laptop. (Most of which are long gone.) Programs like Office 2003 Pro, Adobe Photoshop CS2, Frontpage 2003, and the list goes on... I mean, if I copy the programs from C:/Program Files wouldn't it be possible to save them all?

Thanks for all the help so far guys!

-Peter

Goin' with the Bad Drive gang, too. If you get lucky, you might be able to clone your old drive using a notebook to desktop drive adapter kit (about $12-15 at most computer stores), but I wouldn't bet much on it. Still, Norton Ghost or a Pre-Symantec Drive Image might work. You have a better shot at getting your data copied, though I just don't know of a reliable way to transfer your software. Some publishers will replace lost disks, others will just want to sell you the newest version. Check with support for the products in question.

I doubt the mainboard is bad. Problems with failing drive electronics will produce all the symptoms with slow boot, etc. you've described. On the warranty front, you might check with the drive manufacturer and see if you can't just warranty the drive directly through them. I have done tons of work on Vaio's that were still in warranty, but the customers couldn't deal with Sony's slow turn-around times, bonehead support, or whatever, and preferred to pay instead. Even if you have to buy a drive, they don't cost much, and I think you can handle the installation yourself.

Ghost should do the job. Make an image on a different drive or CD/DVD and restore it on the new HDD. Hint: MiniPE has Ghost in it.

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Originally Posted by CeeBee

Ghost should do the job. Make an image on a different drive or CD/DVD and restore it on the new HDD. Hint: MiniPE has Ghost in it.

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Awesome. But where do I download this "MiniPE?" I googled it and only got adsites/bad links. Can you throw me the link? Thanks

-Peter

First off, I'd like you to tell me how on earth will they ever know I removed the hard drive? The last time I had a problem with my DVD Drive and a technician let me take it out my self. Trust me, my warranty is still good.

The technician telling you to take it out and you taking out the harddrive are 2 vastly different things.
There are a number of ways to tell if something on a computer has been tampered with

When I said I hadn't downloaded anything in two weeks, I wasn't lying. I've had that many songs since I was in the 7th grade and any song I download, I run a virus check on each one. If there were such thing as a germaphobe with PCs, I'd be one.

No single antivirus program on the planet is good for every single one.
And frankly a virus may be the least of your worries since it kinda obvious you use some type of file sharing program.
I would be more concerened about a rootkit or some program that can destroy the first sector on the HD

What is this adapter called and where can I get one? Also, is there any way I can save the programs I have on the hard drive? (I did save the registry values.)

Its a 2.5 to 3.5 harddrive adapter. They are usually avaliable at a lot of computer stores for a few bucks

Booting from the Windows CD is out of the question since my DVD drive won't even open and after I forced it open with a paper clip, it didn't even make an attempt to even search for a CD...

I have opened a number of cdrom,cdrw,dvd, and dvdrw drives with apaper clip. none ever broke that i saw. Something else is likely wrong

If it is a Hardware problem Did you drop it? 4 months old I wonder what
harddrive will die at 4 months? My western Digital is still going at 3.5 years
and going and going :)

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Originally Posted by xpuser357

If it is a Hardware problem Did you drop it? 4 months old I wonder what
harddrive will die at 4 months? My western Digital is still going at 3.5 years
and going and going :)

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Oh stuff and nonsense..almost any harddrive manufacturer has drives that can fail at any time..I get three or four a week in here in desktops and laptops that fail in the first few months of use..

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Originally Posted by xpuser357

If it is a Hardware problem Did you drop it? 4 months old I wonder what
harddrive will die at 4 months? My western Digital is still going at 3.5 years
and going and going :)

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No. I have treated my computer like gold ever since the first day I got it. Never droped it, in fact, there isn't even one scratch on it! I guess it's just my horrible luck...

-Peter

A manufacturer can say that their product has, for instance, a mean time between failures of 200,000 hours, but that is just a statistical projection. Even if you accept this as relevant, a bell curve has 2 ends. Pyro, you just wound up on the wrong end.

Update:

So the technican came over my house today. The minute he turned on the computer, it started booting Windows XP no problem. By this time I was like WTF? And he's like "Is there any problem here?" So as soon as I saw my desktop, I immeditaly grabbed the nearest DVD-R and pluged in into the drive (Which DID open now for some reason...) I went to click on My Computer and the PC lagged for a minute or two. After waiting a while we were both discouraged with the blue screen of death.

Now it was time to replace the hard drive. The technican opened the PC (And didn't find any traces of me opening it previously AT ALL I might add...) and replaced the hard drive in a matter of seconds. After putting everything back together, he powered on my laptop. the computer booted up as normal but about 20 seconds later, guess what popped up?

"Operating System not found"

And this was on a NEW HARD DRIVE! (New as in all the factory settings were on it e.i. Windows XP Pro was previously installed on the drive.) This left the repairman stumped... He then went to his bag and pulled out 2 recovery CDs and tryed to put them in my PC, but the tray refused to open. I then helped the man out by getting a paper clip, taking the DVD-R out, and forcing the CD in. After rebooting the computer several times, it refused to read from the CD. Then the last couple of times, the light on the drive came on, but the CD wouldn't boot.

So in the end, the technician told me he'll have to take the laptop and work on it in his own personal time to figure out whats wrong with it. (If he scratches it I'll @#$%ing kill him.) But right now, he saids "I'm as confused as you are." LoL, a repairman that doesn't know what to do.

What do you guys think it might be???

-Peter

In order of possibility...overheating, bad motherboard, bad power delivery, bad memory

A lot of onsite techs have only a certain amount of time to do repairs..they are usually conteacted by third party warranty repair companies. One of the reasons I quit doing that for Dell was because of time limitations and incorrect parts, etc.

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Originally Posted by geoscomp

In order of possibility...overheating, bad motherboard, bad power delivery, bad memory

A lot of onsite techs have only a certain amount of time to do repairs..they are usually conteacted by third party warranty repair companies. One of the reasons I quit doing that for Dell was because of time limitations and incorrect parts, etc.

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Could this rule out the "Bad hard drive" theory by any chance?

-Peter

I am gonna go with bad motherboard or overheating.

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Originally Posted by WildPyro

Could this rule out the "Bad hard drive" theory by any chance?

-Peter

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Not completely, but the chances of both being bad in exactly the same way are pretty small

Bad cables/connectors or bootsector/bios virus maybe.