Vista restore issues

[gadgeteer99]

A friend of mine started worrying that he got a virus because his laptop (toshiba a305) was becoming slow. He did like 4-5 restores and now vista wont boot...it gets to the loading screen and just hangs there indefinitely. Im not sure if its because of the same reasons but safe mode wont even load at the moment...it gets so far and then hangs.

At this point im just going to restore the laptop to factory settings...but I need to get to his files and back a few things up first and I was wondering if anyone knew how I could accomplish this?

[EzyStvy]

Pop the hard drive out and put it in a USB Enclosure.

[strollin]

A perfect reason to have one of these USB Drive Adapter in your toolkit.

[glc]

This one is cheaper:

IDE/SATA to USB 2.0 Cable Adapter - Turn Your 2.5", 3.5" or 5.25" IDE or SATA Drive Into A USB Drive! 2020

I have about 3 or 4 of those kicking around.

[kilgoretrout]

A linux livecd can access the windows partition and copy files to an external hard drive/flash drive, etc. The advantage is you don't have to pull the drive and reinstall it which saves time. However, if you are not familiar with linux, any time saved will be lost in finding your way around linux.

[Nuclear Krusader]

Not to mention the risk of accidental deletion of important files.

Just go with the USB adapter.

[gadgeteer99]

I didn't realize this until I looked at the adapter....but the drive is just standard sata (I really don't work on laptops that much...I figured they were different). So, shouldn't I be able to just plug it into my compy and copy anything over? I'm at work now or I'd go ahead and give it a try.

[Nuclear Krusader]

Yes. That's what I do at work all the time: plug laptops drives to my bench machine (with one of those adapters) to scan them and backup users' data.

[gadgeteer99]

I don't want to spend the money on an adapter if I don't need to though.... I have spare SATA cables...so I can just plug it straight into my motherboard, right?

[Nuclear Krusader]

Yup, you can.

[gadgeteer99]

Awesome, thanks everyone :-)

I managed to back up his documents and reformat/install vista. The restore option crashed when I tried it out...but I had a vista disc and I just used his serial.

I'm still a little worried that the hard drive is dying. He said that ever since he let it overheat really badly that it has problems after a few hours of use. I was hoping it wasn't hardware...but after I got vista installed and drivers/basic software it started acting up. Everything just got slower and slower until it froze and I had to shut it down.

I've never had a hard drive die before so I'm not to sure what to look for.

[glc]

Download diagnostic software from the hard drive manufacturer and test it. However, this sounds like it may be an overheating CPU. Time to open it up and blow the dust out of it and check the fans for proper operation.

[gadgeteer99]

Processor was actually my first thought....when I took it apart to clean it there wasn't a speck of dust though. Easily the cleanest laptop I've ever seen.

I turned it on when I got home last night though and it doesn't even boot now. It asks if it can try to recover - I say yes and it gets started and then comes up with an I/O error and shuts down. Trying to skip recovery and boot makes it hang at the loading screen.

My compy has no problem recognizing the drive though (gotta wait till I'm home to run full tests - suck having to drag it out this long but I haven't been home lately)

I have plenty of time tonight though and I'm hoping hirens boot cd will help me narrow the culprit down.

[glc]

We don't want to hear about Hiren's - its loaded with pirated software. We only recommend the Ultimate Boot CD.

[gadgeteer99]

Sorry about that, I had no idea. I'll give the ultimate boot cd a try and report back later.