Trying to fix a friend's laptop

A friend of a friend gave me her laptop to try to fix. When I start it normally, it starts to load the OS (Vista Home Premium) and then BSD's with the message Unmountable boot volume. Same with last known good configuration. Same mode just locks up while loading. I plugged the drive into my PC via an external enclosure and tried to open it and got a unable to perform operation due to an I/O error. It's not making any clicking noises or anything I've seen broken drives do. At this point, I think any hopes of getting the data off the drive is dead. Is the drive physically damaged or can it be reformatted?

 

Welcome to Major Geeks.
Don't know about laptops, but on a desktop I would check and confirm that ALL cables(data and power) were connected securely to the drive.

 

All the connections are tight.

 

Worth a shot. They can get jarred loose while moving.
One to mark off the list, though.

 

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555302

 

Just tried that with a Vista business disk that I have and it does not give me an OS to repair.

 

The computer I am attaching it to is running Win XP SP3.

How do you log into the recovery console on Vista?

 

Essentially, boot to the vista dvd, and select command prompt:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/...-the-system-recovery-options-in-Windows-Vista

 

This is where I am right now with this drive. When I boot the laptop from a Vista business install DVD I got with my HP laptop, I can boot to the DVD and select the repair option. From there, it asks me which OS I would like to repair and has nothing to select there indicating it can't find an OS to repair.

When I boot from the factory restore disk that my friend gave me, the system starts to load and then hangs on a black screen with windows cursor. It stays like that for an hour or so until I got annoyed and shut it off.

I am wondering if I have a failed drive, bad factory restore disk or both.

 

Okay, I've had some success. I used a Live Ubuntu CD to boot the laptop and I was able to save all of her data. That tells me that the hardware is just fine. I also was able to boot my laptop from her recovery disk and get to the Vista recovery console and it sees my Windows 7 OS. That tells me the disk is fine. But when I boot from the CD on her laptop, it boots to a blank screen.

I'm really confused....

 

The laptop is a Toshiba and the restore disk was ordered from Toshiba when this first happened so it's from the vendor. I did notice a little card in the case this morning that had instructions on it (of course it was under 15 other things) and I am going to check it out once I get home.