Windows 7 won't boot

Hey, I looked around at the other threads, but was unable to find anything near enough to the problem I'm currently having.

My friend has a relatively new Acer Aspire 4551 laptop that won't boot. The first time she had this problem she took it into a tech and was charged $130 for them to wipe her drives. They said she had a partition error and there is no way she could have screwed it up unless she was a programmer. Since she's not a programmer and didn't go playing with her partitions, they said it was just a really rare error.

After the wipe the computer was working fine until just the other day. It now will not boot. I took a look at it and I can get into the BIOS setup by hitting F2, but that's it. F8 and F11 do nothing, it's just a black screen and the computer beeps at me if I hit those keys.

I downloaded Knoppix and am going to try and boot from a USB later today unless you guys have any better suggestions. I'm hoping to at least save her files from the HD.

I'll be happy to provide any relevant details you might need.

OS: Windows 7
Bios: Phoenix SecureCore v1.04

Thanks for the help! (I could really use it, she's pretty cute)

 

Hey plodr, I'll give that a try later today when I get off work and have access to her laptop again. I'll let you know how it goes. Thanks for the suggestion!

 

Plodr you're f***ing wonderful!!! It worked! Windows booted in recovery mode and was able to start again. Her files were also all there. She tackled me and...well, it was a very good night! I wish I could thank you more than once!

 

We have a winner!

roflmao

plodr: Major Geek Extraordinaire - Matchmaker

:clap