Need some help, have a HP laptop running vista, fine this morning, switched off to bring downstairs and now it wont recognise it has windows, have tried the disc scan and memory scan and it shows fine, can't even load to a safe version of windows. It has so many important photos on so dont want to do a full restore as this will wipe the disc......HELP PLEASE?
Laraine

ive had this problem, its not recognising the hard drive...sometimes its a nightmare, sometimes a quick fix lol...you have a pm

Your over your limit so cant pm you back lol

Sounds like a valuable lesson in backing up to me...

open the back of your computer and take out the hard drive .then put it back in and switch on .if that doesnt work you may have to press f2 on start up and find the bit that says find hard drive ,bit tricky but possible or take it to the doc on here and he may be able to sort it

What is the actual error it shows, sometimes it can be as simple as a bad shutdown, as long as the drive itself hasn't failed everything else is a fairly simple fix (to get to the documents at least).

*nix boot disk or you just run it as a slave?

If you have important photo on your hard drive it might be worth taking your hard drive out connecting it to another Computer/Laptop as a external drive then copying your pictures across before taking any drastic action.

This type of thing happened to me last year pc would start windows so I did the above and got my photo's & documents safely on my laptop, then while it was connected to my Laptop I did a scan disk on it. It took ages but when I put the drive back in my pc it work.
Always better to be safe than sorry with PC's
I used a Sata/Ide to USB connection kit from E-Bay about a £6 well worth it

its not actually showing any error messages. just sits there waiting. have done the F2, the F4 and the F8 and followed the instructions. It scans the memory and the hard drive no problem. then it reboots and wants to scan again.
When I tried to take it back to a restore point it then told me it had no drivers and to restore them. My restore discs are stored away safely..... but at the moment its not recognising a pen drive or a CD drive from the C: prompt

Laraine

Go into the Bios and check what the time and date is saying?
This will help diagnose if the problem is a loss of default settings.

Bios settings all fine and correct
Laraine

Picked up a SATA carriage and a portable drive today and have transferred all the data over using the Apple Mac, the little netbook I am using (daughter's) would not recognise the hard drive, so a minor panic before using the Mac. The mac recognised all the files no problem and the data was over in no time.

Thank you all so much for your help and suggestions, especially Brady and Matt for your PM's
Next step to sort out the drive and possibly buy a new one. Thanks again
Laraine

Fantastic news, power to the people!!

Lesson for everyone here, remember to ensure our backups are in good order!!

Yes well done glad you got all your data/photo's off, the Sat/Ide to USB kit
I bought was the the best PC investment I ever made I've loaned it to several people
in the last year all with similar problems and it's done the trick.