Hey everyone, have quite an interesting situation on my hands.
Gateway E-155C convertible laptop (school provided and now very out of warranty). One day it stopped working entirely so I woke up to a dead computer. It wouldn't charge and I couldn't start it up. So I took the laptop HDD out and pulled the data off so I could access my notes and files.
One day my computer randomly decides to start charging. So I put the HDD back in and booted her up. It resumed from a standby state (issue?) and I got into the computer with everything laggy and slow. After I restarted the computer, I ended up in a boot loop with the Windows vista attempting to boot up, hit a BSOD and it cycles over and over.
I put in the Vista OS cd to repair the installation. It somewhat works. However now i'm stuck at a black screen with an arrow pointer. At this point i'm annoyed and decide I want to pull the OS product key (which has worn away on the bottom) and put in Hiren's boot cd.....
With no OS detected? Apparently I go into my BIOS and there is no more SATA device. I cycle through the options and manage to get a "Secondary Master - (S1)" the DVD RAM drive, and the LAN boot device.
I select the S1 Secondary master as my main drive and boot up windows recovery and run an OS repair. It restarts and instead of a BSOD, I get that black screen with an arrow yet again. It never gets out of that screen even after a few hours.
I notice now that the recovery options show it as Windows Vista "recovered."
Unable to get into Windows, unable to retrieve a product key..... I'm pretty much stuck
I DO have access to the recovery partition in command prompt where there are two files.
1. Disc1.wim
2. Disc2.swm
I read through several sites showing me how to access the recovery partition and try to boot from it and it doesn't work via command line. Hitting Alt+F10 allows me to access the drive but I boot into the same black screen with an arrow.
Is there a way to access these files and restore my computer from these two files (.wim/.swm)? Or will I have to install linux on this machine and move on from there? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
Gateway E-155C convertible laptop (school provided and now very out of warranty). One day it stopped working entirely so I woke up to a dead computer. It wouldn't charge and I couldn't start it up. So I took the laptop HDD out and pulled the data off so I could access my notes and files.
One day my computer randomly decides to start charging. So I put the HDD back in and booted her up. It resumed from a standby state (issue?) and I got into the computer with everything laggy and slow. After I restarted the computer, I ended up in a boot loop with the Windows vista attempting to boot up, hit a BSOD and it cycles over and over.
I put in the Vista OS cd to repair the installation. It somewhat works. However now i'm stuck at a black screen with an arrow pointer. At this point i'm annoyed and decide I want to pull the OS product key (which has worn away on the bottom) and put in Hiren's boot cd.....
With no OS detected? Apparently I go into my BIOS and there is no more SATA device. I cycle through the options and manage to get a "Secondary Master - (S1)" the DVD RAM drive, and the LAN boot device.
I select the S1 Secondary master as my main drive and boot up windows recovery and run an OS repair. It restarts and instead of a BSOD, I get that black screen with an arrow yet again. It never gets out of that screen even after a few hours.
I notice now that the recovery options show it as Windows Vista "recovered."
Unable to get into Windows, unable to retrieve a product key..... I'm pretty much stuck
I DO have access to the recovery partition in command prompt where there are two files.
1. Disc1.wim
2. Disc2.swm
I read through several sites showing me how to access the recovery partition and try to boot from it and it doesn't work via command line. Hitting Alt+F10 allows me to access the drive but I boot into the same black screen with an arrow.
Is there a way to access these files and restore my computer from these two files (.wim/.swm)? Or will I have to install linux on this machine and move on from there? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!