Please help before i lob this bloody thing out of the window!

[waiting game]

My Mrs has managed to kill her laptop. Its a Toshiba satallite L300.

 

Somehow it has lost all trace of windows. I try doing a factory reset when i turn it on but its lost any back up date! Toshiba didn't give a disk for recovery as it (in theory) was supposed to be done via the laptops HD.

 

I have tried downloading (on my pc) a vista repair disk and it failed! I tried every way i can think of to try and fix this bloody thing and i CANT!

 

 

I either need a download for the recovery disk and or a (downloaded) copy of vista to load back on. I don't fancy putting my hand in my pocket if i don't have too, so any help would be AMAZING!!!

 

Thanks in advance & Happy Holidays!

[coop]

One way round it would be to download a copy of the Vista she had on and use the key on the underneath of the Laptop so the Laptop will think its an original install.

 

Is the laptop showing that the hard drive is there when you enter bios as could it not be a case of the hard drive failing rather then windows becoming corrupt.

 

If there is any data on there you need then using your pc download a copy of slax iso (its free) as this is a linux OS you can run off a cdr and once you boot using this disc will allow you access to the HD if its not fucked.

 

Is it a laptop or a netbook as they do tend to have a backup like you said already on the hard drive which makes me think the HD could have knackered up/got corrupt.

[waiting game]

Yeah its a laptop my fear is the HD is fucked too, although it has done something like this before.

 

Any ideas on where i can download a version of vista from a safe site??? It worries me downloading such a large file from an unknown/untrusted site.

 

I could give that ago! Thanks for your help mate!

[coop]

There is not going to be such a thing as a safe site and you probably will have to go down the torrent route but try and use a private site such as Demonoid.

 

Do you not know anyone who has a copy of Vista you can borrow as you don't need their key as you have your own.

[waiting game]

There is not going to be such a thing as a safe site and you probably will have to go down the torrent route but try and use a private site such as Demonoid.

 

Do you not know anyone who has a copy of Vista you can borrow as you don't need their key as you have your own.

 

Most of my mates use these bloody macs as they think they are better for work. I dare not ask them about this or ill get my usually lecture hahaha.

 

Thanks mate, ill have a search around!

[coop]

To be honest mate thinking about it it does seem strange that its lost its backup data as well as normally this would be on a different partition to the main windows.

 

This obviously means if your windows goes down its just that partition that is affected and not the backup one.

 

It looks more and more like the hard drive is fucked mate but im sure someone like Uncle Meat can come along and advise on further steps to take.

[Uncle_Meat]

AFAIR, Toshibas *don't* have a backup/restore partition as such. When you switch them on from new, they prompt you to make your own set of recovery DVDs, which comes from an image file that lurks on drive D. Once you make the recovery set, it deletes the image file. I'm pretty sure it's a WIM image file, if you can get to that at least there's ways and means of manually restoring from a WIM file. The main advantage of using the proper recovery set is that all the drivers and so on are all preconfigured for you.

 

Of course, if you never made that recovery set when asked....

 

As above, any matching Vista install DVD will do the job, the only problem you might have then is downloading and installing the various drivers to get all the devices working again.