How-To Geek

Needshelp,

You need to do it REAL fast...

Press FN+F1 key as soon as you boot, it will switch to the external monitor immediately. You can also try the other function keys... Once the monitor is up and running, you can press the F11 key to perform a "hard reset". If that doesn't work... Boot up the laptop, press Fn+F1 and then Fn+F11. See if it works.

WARNING : Performing a "Hard Reset" will wipe all the data. Use at your Own risk...
I recommend you follow these steps :

1. Boot your laptop and press Fn+F1 immediately.
2. Boot into Safe Mode
3. Run CCleaner, Chkdsk and Defragment.
4. If that solves the problem well and good, otherwise...
5. Repeat step 1 and keep tapping F12 key, it will bring up a boot menu.
6. Insert your Windows XP CD and boot from the CD.
7. Follow this article and your laptop will be reincarnated with all the files intact.

NOTE : If you don't have Windows XP CD, get it from someone. BUT, before performing the Non-destructive re-install. You MUST read this article about how to obtain your license key from windows. Note it down somewhere, as you'll need it during the re-install. DON'T EVEN THINK OF RE-DISTRIBUTING IT !! IT'S ONLY FOR YOUR OWN REPAIR PURPOSE...

Well i formatted another computer i was working on by "format c:" now it says "bootmgr not found." Ah well thats a different issue. Still would like assistance with the aformentioned laptop.

Sorry, Pressing fn+f1 didn't do anything that I could see. Pressing Fn+F11 did not bring up any menus; the computer continued booting like normal. I already did chkdsk and defragmented so I guess we could say those worked but didn't accomplish my goal. Steps 5 through 7 are not available to me because I dont have the windows xp cd, If i did I would have done that first.

needshelp ,

You said, "I try running "chkdsk /f /r C:" it says "cannot lock current drive. Chkdsk cannot run cause its in use by nother process....run on next startup?" Y/n. So i do that. But to no avail."

Did you restart the machine to let it run a check ?

And which problem is requiring priority ? The Screen ?

OR

The HDD ?

Ok, so how did he break the monitor ?

Did he hit it or was it dropped ? Did he try to rip it in half like a phone book ? LOL

Just to clarify. Are you able to see the initial BIOS checks on the laptop screen? Can you get into the BIOS (check the priority is set to CD boot first as you'll need that at some point). If you're not getting anything intelligible on the screen at first boot then it is definitely a hardware problem.

If you do get something legible on the screen then a factory restore should cure the problem, and if it was badly infected, is probably the quickest & easiest way. On HP laptops, it should be the F10 key that gets you to the recovery partition, but you do have to hit it at just the right moment during boot so may take a couple of attempts.

I pressed f10 and that got me into some internal settings but nothing that said recovery. said the stuff like "set user passwords" and "set master password" and date/time and disk information. Also had a thing to run disk integrity check(short check and long check) so I ran the long one.