laptop problem help

[half amazing]

Hi guys,

I was reffered to this site by another person because I posted the same question in a different forum, maybe this is not the right section to ask this, and mods please feel free to move it

I have a problem with my laptop. it keep freezes, I tried restart, safe mode with last known configuration, and system restore, but after it starts it freezes, I have documents that I really need in my computer, and I was only days away from gettin my external drive to back up all of my stuff. how do I fix this problem, this might be easy for you guys but I'm not very good with computers, any body wanna help a noob out?

[glc]

I don't know about fixing the freezes - that could be just about anything software or hardware related, but to rescue your files, you can remove the hard drive, put it in an adapter, and install it in a desktop computer as a second drive. You could also put the drive into an external housing.

Here's an adapter:

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=HD-108&cat=HDD

I would advise you rescue your files before trying to find the cause of the freezes, because it's very possible you may be reformatting the drive and reinstalling everything as part of that troubleshooting.

[half amazing]

thank you so much for the advice. I don't have a desktop for now and I bought this laptop 8 months ago, it's a Sony Vaio VGN-A130B, the last thing I remember doing was I installed a windows theme software and tried to use it but after that my laptop started to freeze, I restarted it and it was the same, so I tried to restore it which worked out fine but the problem came right after it finished restoring.

this is really not good, what other options I have?

[glc]

This may not help save your data, but at 8 months old, I'd think it's still under warranty and you should be looking in that direction to get it repaired. Expect the first thing you are asked to do is a full system reload - which will blow away your data.

This is very advanced, so I don't know if you would personally want to do this, but you could boot the thing up with a CD such as BartPE or Knoppix (both self-contained operating systems) and see if it freezes. If it does, you have a hardware issue. If not, it's a Windows issue. If you DO want to do this and have access to such a CD, and it will successfully boot and keep running, you can rescue your data to your external drive this way when you receive it. If it freezes, the only way to rescue your data is remove the hard drive as I already indicated.

[thefultonhow]

Heads-up -- the Sonys that I've seen all have hard drives that are relatively hard to remove. You essentially have to take the laptop apart to get to the hard drive. You may want to transfer the files off using BartPE and a USB key -- that could be easier than getting the hard drive out.