Urgent IT help!!!

[Deleted member 2227]

My fathers lap top has had a virus or some other major **** up and now it wont bootup. If he hits f2 and enters setup nothing happens. I've told him he'll to reformat from the xp disk. He says he has no drives that will work and the laptop doesnt have a floppy drive.. HELP . Now what!

 

[Shude]

In situations like that, I'd consider buying an adapter for the laptop HDD so it can be plugged into a desktop. Once it's in the desktop you can virus scan it, back up any data and then wipe it. Put something like Windows 98 system files on it and the entire contents of an XP disc or whatever OS you want, then put it back in the laptop.

Beware you should look out for any customised drivers or system/recovery folders on the laptop HDD, some of those make rebuilding a machine with custom parts like a laptop a LOT easier.

What make is it?

 

[Deleted member 2227]

I dont know what make it is i'm afraid. If I plugged my laptop into his with a usb cable will I be able to erase his hard drive so that he can format it again? I suspect this was a daft question!

 

[blassberg]

My fathers lap top has had a virus or some other major **** up and now it wont bootup. If he hits f2 and enters setup nothing happens. I've told him he'll to reformat from the xp disk. He says he has no drives that will work and the laptop doesnt have a floppy drive.. HELP . Now what!

you have a pm

 

[machasm]

My fathers lap top has had a virus or some other major **** up and now it wont bootup. If he hits f2 and enters setup nothing happens. I've told him he'll to reformat from the xp disk. He says he has no drives that will work and the laptop doesnt have a floppy drive.. HELP . Now what!

What do you mean if he hits f2?
Are you talking about entering the BIOS?
Because if you are and you can't then it has nothing to do with a virus or hard drive but it means that the machine will not POST (Power On Self Test).
So is he able to enter in the setup/BIOS?
If it doesn't POST then it is more likely to be a hardware issue such as faulty RAM or PSU problem.
If you do get something on the screen such as 'no boot device' or suchlike then the problem is more likely to be something wrong with the drive.
Can you be more specific?
Mac.

 

[splang]

personally I would flash the bios... let me know if you need help doing this..

Steve

 

[Deleted member 2227]

OK. Blassberg. Many thanks for your advice but it didnt work on his machine. I really appreciate the efforf though.

Mac. When he hits F2 it says entering setup then just stops!
Splang. I havnt a clue how to do that!

 

[blassberg]

OK. Blassberg. Many thanks for your advice but it didnt work on his machine. I really appreciate the efforf though.

np - good luck

 

[Flyer]

Quick question that may have absolutely no bearing on your situation ... is he with NTL?

 

[machasm]

OK. Blassberg. Many thanks for your advice but it didnt work on his machine. I really appreciate the efforf though.

Mac. When he hits F2 it says entering setup then just stops!
Splang. I havnt a clue how to do that!

Hmmmm.
The fact that it says entering BIOS is an indication that PSU,CPU and RAM are all functioning (otherwise you would get a black screen and nothing else).
How long did you wait for the BIOS screen to come up?
Sometimes if there is a prob with the hard drive then it can take a while for the BIOS screen to appear (waiting for timeout on hard drive).
Splang's suggestion of re-flashing the BIOS could be on the right track.
There are a couple of things you could try first though.
1) Try and re-seat the hard drive.
This is usually mounted on the side and is accessible via a tray normal held in place by one or two screws.
Unscrew them, pull out the drive then fit it back in (obviously with the power off!)
2) Reset the BIOS to factory defaults. This can be done by entering the BIOS (setup screen) and the choosing the 'restore to factory defaults' setting.

Are there any strange noises?Like a ticking noise perhaps? Sometimes when the hard drive is having problems seeking the heads make a 'ticking' noise.
Could be an indicator that the drive is duff.

Mac.

 

[machasm]

R2D2 you have a PM.
Mac

 

[splang]

r2d2 - you would need to find the make and model of his motherboard and go to the manufacturers website - you can then make a bootable floppy or cd to automatically flash the bios on power on...

If you can find out the make and model I can help from there?

Steve

 

[Deleted member 2227]

Quick question that may have absolutely no bearing on your situation ... is he with NTL?

Telewest I think.

 

[Deleted member 2227]

Thankyou to all of you guys who made contact and tried to help. Really appreciated.

The story so far is that nothing will make it boot pass the page where it says what it is and runs its initial tests. F2 doesnt enter setup, F8 does do safe mode and on his computer F12 doesnt get the boot menu. It wont boot from the xp cd, it wont boot from a xp startup disk we downloaded, it doesnt have a floppy drive and when you remove the cd drive is wont boot from the hard drive. In all situations if never gets pass the first page. It is a tiny laptop with an AMD Athlon 64 3ghz processor running at 333 if that means anything.

In the words of John Cleese. " It's DEAD! it has ceased to be. .............its a stiff! This is an ex laptop in need of a new hard drive!

Big thank you to all who offered advice! THANKYOU

 

[High-Lo]

F8 does do safe mode

R2 did you mean F8 doesn't do safe mode?

I have a USB floppy drive if you'd like to borrow it? Although it doesn't sound like it gets that far in the boot process.

 

[Deleted member 2227]

OOps Doesnt!

I think he has now given up on it and is taking it into a shop today. Thanks anyway!

 

[Flyer]

Telewest I think.

The only reason I asked is because I had a client this week with exactly the same problem, except with a desktop. It turned out to be a faulty USB NTL modem; unplug it and the PC would boot up normally, plug it in and it would refuse to even POST.

 

[Deleted member 2227]

No I unplugped everything from this machine and it still was useless! So I cant even blame telewest!