[macdonaldlad]

Ok, so Ièm new to this forum, I joined because of the above problem. I was watching the Office on my Sony laptop today and put the thing to hibernate so have dinner and i come back to turn it on, and this message on a black screen occurs, the disc drive whirrs for about 3 seconds and the stops completely. I tried putting a led zeppelin cd in to see what would happen, it whirred a little bit longer, then came to the same result. Ive done a little reading on this site before posting and it seems something is wrong with the harddrive, which, i have no idea how to fix. 3 and half semesters worth of school work is on this thing and I really dont want to have to wipe it or reformat it, is there anything else i can doÉ (also for some reason on this pc, question marks and apostrophes are not working)

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Run hard drive diagnostics: http://www.tacktech....ay.cfm?ttid=287 (or http://www.bleepingc...opic28744.html)
Make sure, you select tool, which is appropriate for the brand of your hard drive.
Depending on the program, it'll create bootable floppy, or bootable CD.
If downloaded file is of .iso type, use ImgBurn: http://www.imgburn.com/ to burn .iso file to a CD (select "Write image file to disc" option), and make the CD bootable.

NOTE. If your hard drive is made by Toshiba, unfortunately, you're out of luck, because Toshiba doesn't provide any diagnostic tool.

[Broni]

Run hard drive diagnostics: http://www.tacktech....ay.cfm?ttid=287 (or http://www.bleepingc...opic28744.html)
Make sure, you select tool, which is appropriate for the brand of your hard drive.
Depending on the program, it'll create bootable floppy, or bootable CD.
If downloaded file is of .iso type, use ImgBurn: http://www.imgburn.com/ to burn .iso file to a CD (select "Write image file to disc" option), and make the CD bootable.

NOTE. If your hard drive is made by Toshiba, unfortunately, you're out of luck, because Toshiba doesn't provide any diagnostic tool.