Laptop Issues

Nique · 01-01-2012, 01:12 AM

My wife's Sony Vaio stopped working last night. I need a computer for work so I went ahead and purchased an ASUS laptop from Best Buy with pretty decent specs (14" screen, pretty good for traveling, but not annoyingly small). So I need help with a couple things.

First off, the VAIO only stays on a command prompt screen but doesn't respond to anything, and we haven't backed up files in a while. The only things it WILL do is reboot after hitting ctrl-alt-dlt, and it will possibly boot from a CD. But the only reason I know it will do THAT is because I happened to have an old Windows 98 disc laying around and it gave me the boot from disc options. I didn't want to try installing that because I need to try and recover the files and didn't want to risk wiping the HDD.

We don't have recovery discs for Windows 7, and I would like to try linking the new ASUS laptop to the VAIO and just transfer the files I need. I have a friend who is better at this stuff than me who may be doing this for me, but I'm wondering if this is something I might be able to do myself. Any guidance on this would help me out a lot.

I am also looking for some fun/ useful ways to customize my new laptop since I haven't had one of my own for a while, so I will be poking around the forums and elsewhere for suggestions on that, feel free to recommend something.

Grandmaster_Skweeb · 01-01-2012, 10:28 AM

If it is able to boot from cd the easiest way to go about things is to make a live boot cd/dvd and copy all the desired information to an external hard drive. Assuming usb isn't hosed, that is.

Linux distros are very well suited for such purposes. Distrowatch has plenty to choose from, but if you're in a hurry I'd say stick to the basics: Debian, Mint, or Ubuntu'll do just fine in a snap.

Orrr, if you don't feel like wasting a cd, or dvd, for a one time use you can use Pendrive linux's usb installer. Turns a spare flash drive into a bootable operating system much like a disk. If the thumb drive is big enough you can also have persistent storage, depending on the distro that is.

If you go the usb boot I'd suggest formatting the thumb drive with HP's usb disk format tool first. Format to fat32 and then install the OS of choice to the fresh usb via the usb installer. Reason I suggest the HP utility is the windows format tool tends to be....problematic for the usb route. I've learned that the hard way.

Nique · 01-01-2012, 08:14 PM

I remember using Ubuntu previously to try and revive one of our other laptops but I can't remember if I was able to grab the data from it or not. Is my file structure going to remain in tact?

Also, what kind of life expectancy should I be getting out of laptops? The last time we had problems the HDD was totally corrupted and I'm concerned something similar has happened here. Are we doing something wrong - not defragging enough or something like that? Or are we just dealing with normal hardware failure after 2-3 years of use?

Grandmaster_Skweeb · 01-01-2012, 09:34 PM

That's the joy of a Live distribution: it doesn't change the file structure of the HDD since the OS is running entirely in ram. It'll detect the hard drive and its contents for you to offload to another device. Unless you mean if you install it to the HDD will it keep the current file structure and information? The answer to that would be no.

2-3 years is generally the life expectancy that I'd expect out of a regularly used laptop.

01-01-2012, 10:28 AM	#2
Grandmaster_Skweeb Doesn't care anymore Join Date: Mar 2004 Posts: 2,429	If it is able to boot from cd the easiest way to go about things is to make a live boot cd/dvd and copy all the desired information to an external hard drive. Assuming usb isn't hosed, that is. Linux distros are very well suited for such purposes. Distrowatch has plenty to choose from, but if you're in a hurry I'd say stick to the basics: Debian, Mint, or Ubuntu'll do just fine in a snap. Orrr, if you don't feel like wasting a cd, or dvd, for a one time use you can use Pendrive linux's usb installer. Turns a spare flash drive into a bootable operating system much like a disk. If the thumb drive is big enough you can also have persistent storage, depending on the distro that is. If you go the usb boot I'd suggest formatting the thumb drive with HP's usb disk format tool first. Format to fat32 and then install the OS of choice to the fresh usb via the usb installer. Reason I suggest the HP utility is the windows format tool tends to be....problematic for the usb route. I've learned that the hard way. Last edited by Grandmaster_Skweeb; 01-01-2012 at 10:32 AM.

01-01-2012, 09:34 PM	#4
Grandmaster_Skweeb Doesn't care anymore Join Date: Mar 2004 Posts: 2,429	That's the joy of a Live distribution: it doesn't change the file structure of the HDD since the OS is running entirely in ram. It'll detect the hard drive and its contents for you to offload to another device. Unless you mean if you install it to the HDD will it keep the current file structure and information? The answer to that would be no. 2-3 years is generally the life expectancy that I'd expect out of a regularly used laptop. Last edited by Grandmaster_Skweeb; 01-01-2012 at 09:47 PM.