It won't boot!

Today was a waste of time. As I have said before, my laptop is acting funny. Loosing its way and suddenly shutting down. The last time was two days ago when I had trouble booting up.

I hit the eprom diagnostics and started checking out the installed components. When it came to the disc drive, it said no IDE device installed. Meaning it couldn't find the hard drive. Bummer!

I messed with it and managed to turn it off and on a bunch of times and it booted. But then it failed about five minutes later. Messed some more and got it going again. This time I was on the desk and I was careful not to move the machine or bump it.

I managed to plug in the backup mirrored drive and check all the user directories, and it hung in there for a full backup. I haven't tried to use that yet, but with some luck, the portable has all my files and pictures. If not then all is lost. Not a pleasant thought.

This morning, I couldn't get it to boot. Not at all, no matter what I did. A new drive was in order. So off I went to the local computer parts store.

They had new drives, SATA laptop 160 Gb, for $59. Western Digital. At least they weren't Maxtors. I wouldn't have bought one of those. So I came home with the new little possession.

Putting in the drive was just several screws, which transferred the rail cage and moving a connector adapter to the new drive. I fired it up and it of course did nothing. But that disc access light went out. It was frozen on with the old drive.

I had made the backup DVDs when the laptop was new, and it only took about 45 minutes to find them. So I popped in the first one and tried a reboot. Nothing! Frustration!

So back over to the linux box (Ubuntu) and out onto the internet for research. About 15 minutes later, after reading numerous posts, I found the answer. F11. Boot the ROM and hold F11 quick while it is in the ROM screen. It just sat there! But I surmised it was thinking. After a long while it said to press r for recover.

Back over to the working box and I found that this would reformat the blank drive and create the recovery. Cool.

Now this has gone on since 9 AM, and I am still downloading programs and such, and its 10 PM. I even loaded the dreaded service pack 3. As I write this, Open Office is loading.

Perhaps tomorrow I will get to my user files. Lets hope the new hard drive lasts forever. Lol

Nothing else going on here, but I am told we will be taking all four grand children to the Pumpkin Patch tomorrow. Oh I can't wait! It will be fun, but a zoo I'm sure. It will beat reconfiguring a laptop I'm sure.