Tag Archives: best buy

I am fixing a friends laptop computer that has Vista on it. She bought it from Best Buy a little over a year ago. 5 months ago she was downloading a game, closed the lid, and went to bed while the game kept downloading. When she woke up and open the laptop lid, it asked her to restart. After restarting the computer she received the “A disk read error has occurred, press ctrl+alt+del to restart.” That is where it is stuck at.

She took her computer to Best Buy and was told she had MalWare and that it would cost $325 (she even bought the extended warranty which they told her doesn’t cover the hard drive) to send it off and have the data backed up and a new Vista OS installed. Or $525 to backup data and replace hard drive. I know thats bs. I took it from her yesterday to play with it.

I have tried using the Vista Recovery CD from NeoSmart, but no luck. I set laptop to boot from cd and it stops after the Windows Loading screen that has the little green “Knight Rider” bar. After that screen it just goes black. I know the CD is fine because I tested it in my computer. I know the DVD drive is fine also because of whats follows in the next paragraph. I am pretty sure this problem is a simple fixboot/fixmbr problem, but I can’t get the Recovery CD to load which in turn prevents me from running anything. BTW, this laptop like many does not have a Vista CD since it has the Recovery Partition installed on the HDD. Can’t access that since I can’t start Windows. She did however make other Recovery CD’s when she bought the computer using the Recovery Manager (you know the whole 3 Dvds crap) but those will not work either. they just cause a clicking sound.

So, my last effort was Linux Live. I don’t use Linux, but I always keep a updated Linux Live CD for just such an occasion. Linux Live (Using Slax) will load just fine from the DVD drive and I am able to access the contents of her HDD. So now I am pretty sure the HDD is in good shape and that the boot sector is the culprit. My question basically boils down to:

Is there any way to restore a Windows Vista Boot Sector with a linux live cd?

I did a search and came across ms-sys, but know nothing about it. I aso have a Win XP CD, but read somewhere that you should never use an XP CD to repair Windows Vista boot sectors. I so far haven’t even tried that CD to see if it will load. Anyway that is where I am at. Any help or guidance would be appreciated.

I am fixing a friends laptop computer that has Vista on it. She bought it from Best Buy a little over a year ago. 5 months ago she was downloading a game, closed the lid, and went to bed while the game kept downloading. When she woke up and open the laptop lid, it asked her to restart. After restarting the computer she received the “A disk read error has occurred, press ctrl+alt+del to restart.” That is where it is stuck at.

She took her computer to Best Buy and was told she had MalWare and that it would cost $325 (she even bought the extended warranty which they told her doesn’t cover the hard drive) to send it off and have the data backed up and a new Vista OS installed. Or $525 to backup data and replace hard drive. I know thats bs. I took it from her yesterday to play with it.

I have tried using the Vista Recovery CD from NeoSmart, but no luck. I set laptop to boot from cd and it stops after the Windows Loading screen that has the little green “Knight Rider” bar. After that screen it just goes black. I know the CD is fine because I tested it in my computer. I know the DVD drive is fine also because of whats follows in the next paragraph. I am pretty sure this problem is a simple fixboot/fixmbr problem, but I can’t get the Recovery CD to load which in turn prevents me from running anything. BTW, this laptop like many does not have a Vista CD since it has the Recovery Partition installed on the HDD. Can’t access that since I can’t start Windows. She did however make other Recovery CD’s when she bought the computer using the Recovery Manager (you know the whole 3 Dvds crap) but those will not work either. they just cause a clicking sound.

So, my last effort was Linux Live. I don’t use Linux, but I always keep a updated Linux Live CD for just such an occasion. Linux Live (Using Slax) will load just fine from the DVD drive and I am able to access the contents of her HDD. So now I am pretty sure the HDD is in good shape and that the boot sector is the culprit. My question basically boils down to:

Is there any way to restore a Windows Vista Boot Sector with a linux live cd?

I did a search and came across ms-sys, but know nothing about it. I aso have a Win XP CD, but read somewhere that you should never use an XP CD to repair Windows Vista boot sectors. I so far haven’t even tried that CD to see if it will load. Anyway that is where I am at. Any help or guidance would be appreciated.