(no subject)

[greencurlymum]

Question for all the techies here:
What to do with a notebook (HP Elitebook 2530p) that won't start up anymore? It's my husband's business notebook, which contains vital data for a meeting on Monday, so he's kind of desperate.

He told me that the ventilator was unusually loud over the past week. Then, last evening, the monitor wouldn't start, though you could hear the notebook itself working. After the second restart the only thing that happened was the frantic blinking of the power led (NOT the on/off) from blue to yellow and back again.
So far that is the only activity the notebook is willing to show.

I tried the famous press-start-for-3-minutes. I also tried the recommended disconnect-from-all-power-sources-and-then-press-start-for-3-minutes.
The result has been zero.

My husband is running circles by now.

Any ideas, before there is a permanent furrow in my kitchen floor?

Comments

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

Oh dear... =:o{

Remove the hard drive from the machine (carefully, after having disconnected all power and other cables from the machine and left it sitting for a minute), and put it onto a USB adaptor cable or into an external disk caddy (or "enclosure"), and plug that into another machine (e.g. one at work) so that he can retrieve his data from the drive.

If you don't have the necessary caddy or adapter cable, then you'll need to rush to a supplier of such things first thing in the morning. =:o\ Examples: http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/enclosures/715_7053_70057_xx_xx/xx-criteria.html . You'll need one that matches the connection type of the drive (SATA or PATA/IDE), and (if it's an enclosure) the size (2.5" or 3.5").

DO NOT try to just swap it with the drive in another laptop, unless they have *IDENTICAL* hardware, preferably from the same manufacturing batch. Otherwise, you'll spend half a day convincing the Windows installation it really can work with the hardware it's got (it's a bit like waking up one morning inside the wrong body!), and even then it might not let you touch the data you're after.

Also, you may have to wrestle with permissions/security settings a bit to get the new machine to let you have access to the old machine's data. It depends whether the data was protected or left open to all users originally. If in doubt, use a machine where you have (or someone with you has) Administrator priveleges, so that you can force-change the permissions on the files you need and get access to them.

And next time, of course, remember to copy any critical work/data onto a memory stick or external drive, at regular intervals, or whenever you make significant progress with it (whatever kind & amount of progress crosses your own threshold of "boy, I'd hate to have to do THAT all over again tomorrow!".)

Good luck! =:o\

[salika.livejournal.com]

Sorry for the late reply, but Francesco has been hogging my computer until like 10 minutes ago.
Since his company is based int he US there was just no other machine we could have saved anything to - apart from the fact that the American IT didn't like the ID of critical information being transferred anywhere. So, new computer it is! He had to work without intranet for the last couple of days, but it was better than nothing.
Thank you for your help, anyway. It was the ONLY sound advice I got from anyone and sounded entirely do-able. Even for a blonde like me. ;-/
*HUGS*

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

[NUDGE] How did it work out?