mazz0626 | (no subject)

My laptop decided on Saturday night that it didn't like life and wasn't having any more of it. I'd left it on all day fighting cancer.
So I left it to cool down, then tried to boot up again - it died with a little 'pew!' sound after about twice as long as it should take for a laptop to boot had elapsed. Since then, it has alternately started booting and sat on the black screen with the Windows flag pulsing in and out until the battery dies/I kill it at the power switch, and whinging at me because it wasn't shut down properly last time. It's the latter state that is actually more useful, because it will let me try to fix the problem from there. I've gone down all the 'advanced' repair options - automatic startup repair, system restore, hard drive diagnostics - that I can. I hadn't done system image repair or DOS prompt, because I didn't have the relevant CD or harddrive for the first, and I have no clue what I'm doing with the second.
On the offchance I plugged my portable harddrive into a port the last time I tried to boot, and it allowed me to attempt the image doohickey. It's doing that now.

If this is unsuccessful, can anyone recommend a computer repairman?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Bear says try starting it in SAFE mode, then get onto Zuumedia, who are covering it. We'll have a look tomorrow.

Like I said on facebook, I fixed it. But there's really not much point telling me to start it in safe mode - my car has broken down and you're telling me to drive to the nearest garage.

The FB message could've referred to any of a number of things - not being inside your lovely head, I just needed a bit of a clue as to WHAT you'd fixed.