My laptop has gone belly up!!! Windows just gets to the desktop but doesn't have a start button or icons. I tried the windows rescue function, but no go and tried running an upgrade but that crashed halfway and now I'm thinking I've got to reformat. But I have SO much stuff I haven't backed up. :-( Just thought I'd share. I'm on my GF's computer at the moment. But she doesn't have Bryce! Go figure!! But good news... It's my Renderosity birthday today. March 9th 2003 I posted my first picture. WOOHOO!!

Have you tried pressing "Ctrl + Esc" to run programs?

I feel your pain drawbridge there's nothing worse than not being able to access your work. I hope you're able to do some sort of rescue on all the work you've done, it would be terrible if you lost it. Could you perhaps try wiring up your laptops hard drive to the one on your computer and saving your work over. I guess it's a long shot but it might be the answer to saving your work. Hope you find an answer and happy aniversary. 8) Catlin

actually, you can save everything you have. that sounds like a windows problem, not hardware. just pop in the windows cd, and reinstall it over the old one. you won't lose anything. be careful not to format the whole drive though. just give it a fresh install, only the Windows folder will be deleted and re-installed. all your documents and settings will still be there. drac

Quest - thanks, it's a bit worse than that. The keyboard is non-responsive. Catlin_MC, my thoughts exactly, I'm trying to find somewhere I can get an adaptor to plug my laptop drive in. Plenty on ebay, so might have to go that route.

woah, hold on a second, get a crappy keyboard you can just plug in instead, don't waste money for an adaptor.

if it's been set up on a network, you can often map to it remotely by using the machine name, and copying everything over to a good machine..not sure if that helps, but I do it a lot at work..;)

Thanks guys. Managed to get an adaptor ($7.95 from compusa (it's just a adaptor to go from 44pin to 40 pin)), God bless America. But doesn't work. My betterhalf uses ME on her computer (yeah, I know) and it doesn't read NTFS formatted drives. Drac, great idea about the fresh install. I thought of that too (amazingly, I decided to bring my Windows disks as well as the laptop on vacation, I'm a sad b*stard I know). Trouble is, it gets to "Checking for previous Windows versions" and hangs. Pakled, also a good idea, but won't boot far enough to see the network. I think this is another lesson in the "Do regular backups you idiot" classroom of life.

It might be a hardware problem, if the installation hangs up. Does it boot up in DOS or Safe Mode? If it boots in Safe Mode, you're set up, cause you can then start network and then copy everything over. Press F8 while booting and then try Safe Mode. IF the comp really went belly up, take it somewhere to get the disk out, buy an external USB 2.0 housing for a 2.5" disk, and then you can both back up your stuff to your new computer and have mobile storage afterwards. The housing is something like $10-15. Finally, check these links: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=256194 http://www.annoyances.org/exec/show/article07-006 http://club.cdfreaks.com/archive/topic/72825.html Something might help.

Aye, it seems like a hardware problem. I do hope you can boot in safe mode. I know your pain, Iv'e been there beofre. Good luck!

If it were a regular 'puter, I'd consider checking the little watch-type battery that clips onto the motherboard. I'm not sure if laptops have that (let alone how to get one open w/o breaking it.)

wow that sucks... kinda strange youve gone so long on a single hard drive... assuming thats the case. personally the only thing that goes on my c are apps and os... i never save working files or otherwise on my c, i have a second and third drive for that... and ive had problems myself, thankfully nothing is ever lost...

I think Pauljs75 is talking about the BIOS BATTERY......? I doubt that that's the problem. I'd try to checkout the prob in DOS if you can get it to boot that far.

drawbridgep, my sympathies with you. BUT..all your fault.. you ought to be doing back ups every month. Brutal truth. Never, ever ever trust your hard drive. can't you get it to a compusa store where they can try to save your work? In the meantime.. instead of drowning your sorrows in tears.. go celebrate your renderosity b'day! I think there may be a cple bottles of wine in your chiller?? ;)

yeah, that's called the CMOS battery, but that doesn't have all that much to do with the hard drive. You could probably come up in Bios mode (Setup for the hardware), since it runs off the chip. The missus has ME on her system (this one), and I have Win 2000 (which also usually uses NTFS). There was a provision (at least in 95,98, and NT) to make a 'recovery' disk, that would repair some of the problems with a bad OS, but I'm sure if you had one, you'd have tried it by now (once you're back up and running, it'd be a good idea)
There are companies that can get data off of most any drive, but they're a bit spendy (we use a place called OnTrack, in Oregon somewhere, but it was about $1000/Gig)
I do this sorta thing for a living (in IT), so I've seen many a puir person in this situation. I do hope you find a way to get things back. If there was a way to set up a peer-to-peer network, maybe it could be done that way..sigh.
There's something called ERD Disk Commander, but it's for NT..don't know where it came from (sometimes you don't ask), but actually we have a license..;) maybe there's a version for ME. It can rebuild a crapped-out OS as long as you can boot from a CD (does ME have a 'repair' option? NT does, sometimes that's helped). Also, if you get error messages, you can search on key words from them on Microsoft's Knoweldge base. It's helped me once or twice.
finally, if you know the manufacturer of your hard disk, you can probably go to their web site and download diagnostics. Once you have an error code, tech support can give you something to go on. Usually companies' names are 'companyname.com' (real imaginative). Good luck, hope you get out of there, but to be frank, we sell more CD burners this way..hope it all works out.

Pakled, you don't have to spend a thousand dollars. Recently, Windows on my girlfriend's computer died. Refused to boot up completely. I tried repairing the installation and then to install fresh over the old Windows and nothing helped. The installation was hanging up. First I discovered bad power supply, then bad memory, then bad motherboard. Mucking about, I damaged the existing file structure very badly. so, I took the disk with me to a friend who knows much more about hardware. We put the disk in an external housing, connected it to his computer, he downloaded a free program and set it to scan the disk. When it finished (can take a long time, depending on the number of files), I just marked the files to be rescued and copied them to the friend's computer. They are now on my girlfriend's new computer. drawbridge, if you need it, I can ask the friend what that program was and where you can find it.

Wow! You guys are the best. Pakled, sounds like a very similar situation. erosiaart - Yup, you're right of course. About the wine and the backups. OK, here's the condensed story. -Windows XP only booted to my desktop background with no icons and frozen keyboard. -Safe mode didn't work -Rescue disks didn't work -Installing XP over the old version crashes -Complete install will wipe my files -Plugging the laptop into my GF's puter didn't work cause she's on ME and it's NTSF (NTFS?) formatted. BUT, and this may be a crazy way, but seems to be working... I've downloaded a FREE CD-Bootable version of Linux and that boots fine and I can see all my stuff and it's actually a really cool OS. (Never used it before). SO I can now plug in my 2.5" drive into my GF's puter and then boot that into Linux and copy all my stuff, reformat the laptop and copy it all back via the network. TADA! (This is plan J by the way) And so far it's only cost me $7 for the adaptor. I feel very confident this morning.

drawbridgep..it was the wine that cleared your head.. :) :)

DrawBridge: Thank God you didn't need plan 'x' Plan X: Copy everything you did down on paper and store for future reference...........By this I mean open every file you can and write down every word you see.......;-)

Glad you found a way round this little problem drawbridgep. 8)

WOOHOO!!! Looks like it's worked. My GF's drive is now full with about 4gb of my stuff. Only sad part now is that my Bryce (and other apps) installation disks are 4000 miles away. Hopefully I can bodge it from a copy of the folder. As long as I have Bryce, Photoshop, email and web browsing I'm happy. So, for future reference, if any of you guys get in a similar situation, the free bootable OS I used was KNOPPIX. So good that if there was a Bryce version for it, I'd switch away from Windows. I'll soon be back up to speed and commenting on everyones pictures again.

nah, the $1,000 wasn't mine, it was a programmer at work whose drive died, and they valued it (2 gig, shows how long ago it was), at over the $2,000 it cost to do. Glad to hear there's utilities available for that.
NTFS- NT File System, used on NT 4 and Windows 2000 (different versions, but same idea..you get the ability to set sharing privilages, some rights or permissions, yada yada..;) glad Linux worked for you, I'm using V9 on one of my machines..still learning.

Ah, I see you found Knoppix. The best all round emergency tool I have ever seen. glad to hear it worked out.

Attached Link: http://www.knoppix.net/

It really is a great solution and has a CD burner built in. And even has some games and all for free!! Everything is working fine. Got the laptop back up and on the network and now copying all my stuff back from the GF's machine. So I can smile again. Well... at least as much as I normally do.