[Casey76]

Please help - is my computer retrievable?

As normal I left my laptop on when I went to work last Wednesday, when I got back there was a black screen with "System failure" or similar written on it.

Now, when I turn on my computer, after the initial "Acer" boot up screen I get a black screen which has a couple of error messages, something about "test media cable" and ends with "Operating system not found"

I have now been without a home computer for almost a week, and I'm finding life very difficult (lots of online activities I need to do - not least my banking).

Can my operating system be retrieved, or is everything lost?

The laptop is a 3yr old Acer, and is no longer under guarantee.

Thanks for any help you can give me

KC

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Hello, and welcome to Geeks To Go.
I see this error messege a lot.
It means that your hard drive has failed.
You will need to replace the hard drive and reinstall your Operating System.

[hfcg]

Hello, and welcome to Geeks To Go.
I see this error messege a lot.
It means that your hard drive has failed.
You will need to replace the hard drive and reinstall your Operating System.

[Casey76]

My hard drive has failed? Both of them? Or just the one with the OS on it?

The Acer hame with a total capacity of 80GB, split over 2 HDD (designated C: and D:)

If the HDD has completely failed, then I guess I might just have to bite the bullet and get a new PC all together *sob*

Please tell me this won't have affected my external Lacie HDD which has ALL my photos on it?

Thanks for you help!

KC

[hfcg]

Your Lacee drive should not be affected.
You most likely have one physical drive with two partitions. The C drive has the OS, and the D drive is most likely a recovery partition.
The cost of a new 80GB hard drive is around $60.00, so why not fix this computer?

[Casey76]

It's not really the cost... it's the fact that I have the technical know-how of a gnat!

Made even more complicated by the fact that this is a laptop, not a desk top.

I might get a friend to look at it, but I'm still pretty down as there was still a lot of stuff on the internal HDD that I'll lose completely - that'll teach me to learn how to back up stuff lol!

Thanks again

KC

[hfcg]

it's the fact that I have the technical know-how of a gnat!

I will walk you through this, step by step.
It will amaze you how easy it is!
I do need to know what kind of computer and the model number please.

[Casey76]

OK, I'll get back to you tomorrow (using work PC atm) and need to check specifics on the home laptop.

Thanks

[hfcg]

Before I forget, when we make sure that the laptop is not plugged in we also need to make sure that the battery is removed.
We can leave the battery out for the whole procedure.

[wannabe1]

As one last check, is the drive detected in the BIOS Setup? If the drive has failed catastrophically, or there is a problem with the drive's controller board, it shouldn't be detected.

If it IS detected we can look at a couple of things to determine if it's healthy enough to try a recovery, but by the sounds of things, I'd say hfcg may be correct. The drive has likely failed physically.

Do you have the disk(s) required to reinstall the operating system? If not, you may want to contact Acer and see if they have your HDD with the system preinstalled.

[Casey76]

BIOS Setup? When starting up I get the ACER boot up scree, during which time I have the option to press F2 which accesses some kind of (mightly scarey) menu system... will that be BIOS?

I did notice when I turned the (durned thing) computer on last night, that it appeared to make no effort to actually access the HDD. Even the internal fan didn't brr or anything - I'm oh! so technical, aren't I!

[hfcg]

Hello,
Yes, the F2 optopn is the BIOS.
The fans did not come on?
Did you get any thing on the screen?