[Grml] grml newbie

[Andreas Gredler]

On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 08:41:06AM -0700, DON.RAIKES at 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

-- 
                 Andreas "Jimmy" Gredler 
   ,'"`.         http://www.jimmy.co.at/ | jimmy at g-tec.co.at
  (  grml.org -» Linux Live-CD for texttool-users and sysadmins
   `._,          http://www.grml.org/    | jimmy at grml.org