My laptop fried last night (no I wasn't looking at **** this time)(really). I have a "Hard drive boot sector reading error" and "System block not found".

All programs,files,pic's etc. are gone, I can't get Internet, Nothing. I am not a computer guy....what the heck should I do? get a "repair" done or go for the replace? I don't use it for much other than Internet (forums,web,research), The very few documents I have to write and email, That's really it.

Help!.....
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Well, depends how old it is. If purchased within the past year or two you could just put a new SSD in there. It will run much faster and be quieter.

However, if its an old brick, just buy a new netbook and call it a day.
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Depends how old it is and if you need the docs/pix and other stuff you have on it.
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does your command prompt come up?
What operating system?
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It's a HP G7 that's a couple years old. I don't know how old that is in computer years.I'm guessing it is a fossil.
I have windows 7 (had)
I could live without docs but picture loss is a bummer.
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You should, perhaps, refrain from venturing in to the world of IT.

One possibility is to take it to a repair place, see if they can use the drive as a non-boot drive on another computer and then copy everything that you need to copy to a thumb drive. Alternately, if you have a friend who knows how to do that, have them do it, since it will be way cheaper. You do not have to buy a new enclosure for the munged drive if the other machine is a tower or desktop (not a laptop) since it will have extra disk slots.
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does your command prompt come up when you boot the computer?
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The computer opens to my desktop with only word working.
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so you can click on the start menu?
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Yep
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Leave it alone and take it someplace for repair. You could try Best Buy -- some of them are stellar and some not so much. They will charge you to open it up and look. They should be able to salvage some of your hard drive but it won't be cheap. THe more you boot it, the more data you can lose...

Having been through this myself a number of years ago, I can tell you that while a PIA backups are a good idea. You can get a chreap external USB hard drive at Costco or the like that you can use. Then you (all of us) need the discipline to make a backup once a week or once a month -- whatever suits you.
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I will heed this advice. I know when I have no business messing with something. I know lots of computer "experts" that ruin computers on the regular.

I might just buy a new one and see what can be extracted from my current one. This will really hurt the Habano account....
:-)
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Mark and Michael have the right idea.

Take it someplace and tell them that you just want to see if they can recover your files off the hard drive. The error could either point to corrupted sectors of the hard drive or actual mechanical failure. If it is booting into windows my initial thought would be that a repair place should be able to copy the files off the drive still.

If you have any friends that are technically savvy however you could just buy something like this (or this if it's an older style hard drive) and then use the drive on another computer as an external drive. They should then be able to pull all your files off and you could save them on a thumb drive or a separate external drive.

That would save you some money, but going someplace like Best Buy and having Geeksquad take care of it would probably be the best bet :-)
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13 posts and no one has even mentioned an Apple product. Im proud of you guys!
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:-):-):-)
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PM me. Sounds like you need a data recovery on top of it. Shut the unit down and don't use it as it lowers the chances of DR.
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My wife's laptop took a dump a little bit back and I was able to remove the hard drive and recover data from it. I used SATA wire from a company called Apricorn. I plugged the SATA end into the drive and the other end was a USB to her desktop. It mounted up as a removable drive if I recall and I was able to get pictures and docs without issue.

Good luck.
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Thanks for the help guys, I took it to a shop for a make over and bought me another laptop to keep the CA with drawls at bay. :-)
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