Any IT experts around? Laptop help needed please!

Made any backups recently?

It sounds like ....Wait for it.... the windows install has been corrupted.

It's not one of the little HP DV series by any chance?

No, it's a Toshiba Equium.

So what do you do when windows is corrupt?!

Reinstall it, you have a restore CD?

If there's anything valuable on there you might want to try and rescue it (nobody makes backups anymore, do they?)

A live Linux CD will probably let you access your drive, provided it's not actually digital soup.

Worth pointing out that you might have an actual physical problem too, that caused the fault in the first place... I had so much difficulty getting that fact through to the mouth breathers on the tech line for mine that I fixed it myself and to pot with the warranty... Normally though, such a fault is caused by shutting down improperly.

do you just put it into standby every night instead of shutting it down? It sounds like it could be a memory issue. can you boot into safe mode at all?

Okay, first of all don't panic too much. See if you can boot into safe mode (if you know how to). Does that work?

It could be a memory problem, mine did something really similar just before the wedding and my memory had gone belly up.

Best thing to do though is to find someone who knows what they are doing (pref not PC world!), do you have a computer repair shop in your town (if you don't know someone who knows).

Fingers crossed you'll still be able to get to your photos but from this point forward, get yourself an external hard drive and back up everything that's important to you.

Good luck

No, I don't shut it all the way down - I didn't realise that this could cause problems! I don't know how to boot into safe mode...![:'(]

Could be, but I'd expect a parity error to either occur intermittently or at a different point during the boot each time.

Might be worth pulling or swapping a SODIMM to check, but I doubt it.

Hold down F8 as the machine starts up windows it should bring you to a boot menu.

You might as well talk in Swahili ONE for all the sense that makes to me!!!

I'll try that - thanks

You probably don't want to anyway if your machine is under warranty.

Try for a safe mode boot, have you installed any new software?

I think your best bet, as has been said, is to go to/call out a local repair person. That way they will most likely be able to access your hard drive so that you don't lose anything. If you have and use restore discs, you will probably lose data

L
xx

Are you into Wondoze then?

Wondoze? Don't know. It just says safe mode, the background is black and Ihave all my usual icons. There was a windows update at 3am, so I wonder if whatever was updated has made it fail? I have tried to to a system restore from before and it seems to have worked!

Thanks everyone

If you don't know what you're doing, I would take it to someone who does. If you're in safe mode can you do a system restore from that? I would do that and go back a few days, you don't lose any files etc.

You really need to turn it off regularly though, they don't like being left on.

Actually, provided your cooling is adequate you're better leaving them on all the time... From the POV of the 'puters health that is.

that's what I had heard so thought I was doing the right thing by not turning it off!

Anyway, it seems to be back to normal after the system restore so thanks everyone for your replies.?

It depends upong the machine. As ONE said it needs aqequate cooling and most laptops that I have had wouldn't have anywhere near anough even with an fan stand underneath them. Our file server & desktops are left on permanently though.