On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 08:41:06AM -0700, DON.RAIKES@oracle.com wrote:
Hello,
My first "job" with grml is to try to diagnose/recover a windows laptop. It had problems right from the beginning when we opened the box from the manufacturer, but my daughter was able to keep it going for 2.5 yerars. This spring it simply stopped booting even after a full re-install of windows.
Does it boot from CD but not from Harddisk? Than maybe the hard disk just died. You can check the hard disk by mounting it under Linux. If you can not mount it (or not access it with tools like fdisk) then the hard disk is dead. If you can mount it you can then check if it's only partly damaged by running smartctl, e.g. smartcl -t short /dev/hda. Results will be accessible with smartctl -l selftest /dev/hda. If this test is ok, too, then run smartctl -t long /dev/hda for a more precise test.
greets Jimmy