Hey all, My laptop HDD gave up the ghost last night - no warning, just BAM. Failed the onboard diagnostic tests (HP Pavilion G62) and when I try to repair or restore it just hangs. I've plugged the HDD into a caddy to remove the files I needed - all that Belgian animal pr0n was expensive - and I do have a spare drive. But presumably I can't just plug it in - it will need formatting and an OS installed surely? How do I do that when the old drive is fried? I have access to the gf's Mac or the parents Samsung so I can create a system restore disc I guess, but can this be done retrospectively? I see Ubuntu can be downloaded and installed direct from an ISO on a disc - is this worth looking into? Really need to get it back up and running tomorrow if poss...
Usually plug the HDD in and autoboot from a cd/dvd of windows install, which will format a drive and install it for you.
If the drive has a damaged boot sector for example but is otherwise it's still alive and files can be read from it, you can just chuck it into a SATA - USB converter (your caddy is probably essentially that) and it should appear just fine as a USB drive on another machine. Actually, sorry - you weren't asking that, were you. I think you're asking about how to rebuild the OS on the new HDD you have...? In which case one option is to borrow a retail / OEM disc off someone, assuming it's Windows, and then activate the installation using the Windows product key sticker that should hopefully be on your laptop somewhere. That's what I did with a laptop recently. I did try to copy over and use the recovery partition of the faulty HDD beforehand (as I was still able to read from it; the boot sector was fudged) and I managed to get the recovery to start working off the new HDD but it always froze at certain point. So my advice is don't bother trying to use the recovery partition off the old HDD if you're fitting a new one. Using a retail or OEM Windows CD together with your laptop's Windows product key is a perfectly valid way of doing it and the installation can be properly activated after (I did have to do it over the phone though). Alternatively switch to actually using Ubuntu. It's a very friendly distribution and the level of *nix knowledge needed to make it do regular things is minimal compared to say Debian which I use on other machines. I put Ubuntu on the wife's Laptop and she gets on with it great.
That sounds exactly like my problem... The recovery partition is visible through my USB, but it's empty. The problem is clearly the boot sector... Unfortunately I don't think I have access to any Windows CDs - and if I did create a backup CD when I bought the laptop a couple of years ago I clearly have no idea where it is...might be hidden in a box from the house move, I'll see what I can find. I hear a lot of god things about Ubuntu and I've been telling myself for years that I'd get around to training myself someday...perhaps this is all the motivation I need. Unfortunately the GF has a Mac and for some reason the Ubuntu OS won't burn properly to a DVD-R through her burner. It's a 'known' fault but means I have to go to the parents to use theirs later...
Yeah Ubuntu is pretty good. You might find it better to switch to the Gnome UI rather than using the Unity desktop. Ubuntu has had some flak over using Unity and also for some of the bloat and commercial stuff it has. But it's very user-friendly if you don't want to get into Linux too much. If on the other hand you'd actually like to learn a lot about Linux then you could go for something like Debian, where instead of having a cozy 'Software Center' suchline that Ubuntu provides in its distribution, it's a bit more of a 'raw' Linux experience where you'll find yourself installing stuff via command line, sometimes even compiling stuff from source, editing scripts to actually get your WiFi adapter to work, etc. All good stuff
If you want to put windows back on it, you can download an ISO & burn it to a disk then install using the product key on the bottom on the laptop like Trev says. I assume it was running windows 7? http://malwaretips.com/blogs/download-windows-7-sp1-iso/
Cool - was looking for a link to the .iso last night but I could only find the paid ones...waiting for it to download, going to give it whirl ASAP
I run a live CD of Ubuntu when a PC wont boot. Had to do it the other day when my PC got stuck in a windows update/reboot loop. Idiots!
So a bit of an update... Swapped over the HDD for a spare one from another broken laptop (notice a theme here?) - the screen went on my old Samsung. Using the above links I copied the Windows 7 OS and - lo and behold - it worked. Pretty much spot on. Had to run literally 100s of updates (couldn't find WiFi, couldn't view screen properly etc. etc. until all the 'new' drivers were installed) over the course of the afternoon but here I am typing away on a laptop I thought I'd have to bin - or at least spend some dough on - on Friday! If anything with a freshly formatted drive it's running leaner and faster than it has for about 2 years. Going to try and keep it that way by downloading the bare minimum of programmes - Office, Firefox, AVG, VLC - that's about all. Thanks guys!
Awesome! The amount of crap they streamline in the OS install has got out of hand. It's just bloatware, Trials for this, that & the otherlol
Awesome! Did you register it okay using the sticker on the laptop (assuming there is one)? When I did similar I had to register it by exchanging numbers over the phone.
Absolutely fine - this was the bit that concerned me as I thought I might need a new serial, having already used it once. But then I guess it's attached to this device. Long, tense pause and then - fine!
