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GF dropped Lappy, idioit cousing broke it, need help with recovering old OS

pepsi71ocean

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Ok my GF dropped her laptop on the floor and it wouldn't work, so i took a look and said its something internal and that if she wanted to i could open it up, i didn't have anything top open it up with me, (i have the tools at home) SO it was decided to let her"Certified" computer specialist cousin fix it.

So her parents went to PA and took the Lappy to her Cousin who took the lappy apart and then installed the HDD into another laptop, and then installed a new OS (Vista Business Premium) on it to "help get her data back", I know it sounds asinine but that is what he did.

Being a the dumb idiot he was he voided the warranty when he did that. Now her computer has no warranty.

He did find out what the problem was and then quickly wrapped the laptop back together and said it was fine, her computer illiterate parents were happy and left.

However, on the phone i told him that i would use a copy of XP i have so she can use it for college, she can't afford anything like a new OS for example. And well i told him that ide put that on, he immediately told me that it was illegal, which i knew that but then again i can afford to buy another license for it so it would be all fine and dandy.

But he then insisted that it has to be windows Vista on the laptop and that XP will not work. To add fuel to the fire he told me the lappy requires Vista on it and needs a Business Key to work, and he said he doens't know why. I told him that he installed a copy of vista business and he was like i needed to to get her files and stuff, which i think is a total bull shit lie but nothing can be done about it now.


SO now that the Lappy is back in her hands she gave me another look at it. It has no drivers at all, can't surf the web can't do anything actually, and so im thinking of ways to fix this problem.

Option 1

1. I use my copy of Get DATA Back for NTFS and do a deep recovery. do you think its possible to revive the old OS and her files?

1a. And if so do you think it would make a function OS again? as in would it work?


2. Give her a copy of Puppy Linux and say this is the best that i can do.


3. clean the hard drive, and install XP on her lappy and try and find drivers for it.

4. try and get her to buy Vista Home Premium and try and find all of the drivers.

Keep in mind that this is a HP store bought laptop. and its out of warranty(now because of idiotic cousin) and was bought in august of 08.
 
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Mussels

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now that data has been written to the drive, her old data has been overwritten. it cannot be recovered. Anyone with the faintest clue on data recovery knows that rule #1 is do not install ANYTHING to the drive, if you want to recover data.

No hardware, ever, has been locked to 'business' keys. He is lying. XP will run on it just fine.
 

pepsi71ocean

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that is what i figured,

I know that ive pulled up old data from before but i think your right.


How would i get the XP drivers for the internet on her lappy? any ideas?
 

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that is what i figured,

I know that ive pulled up old data from before but i think your right.


How would i get the XP drivers for the internet on her lappy? any ideas?

download drivers to your PC, burn to CD, tada. once you have the LAN/WLAN driver on, the rest is easy.
 

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that is what i figured,

I know that ive pulled up old data from before but i think your right.


How would i get the XP drivers for the internet on her lappy? any ideas?

Everest will look up the Device ID's as well helps a bit for oddball wlan/lan/video - then do some googling and you can find the rest.
 

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lan/wireless lan, audio, video. thats all you really need most of the time, the rest gets picked up by windows update.
 

pepsi71ocean

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true, true

you think that HP uses generic drivers for the video etix, or is it vista only?

EDIT: is that everest im thinking of? the CPU identifier one?
 

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everest has generic ID stuff, but it doesnt get very far as it mostly relies on drivers to say whats what.

vista has generic drivers for more video cards than XP, but i dont get your question... ETIX?
 

pepsi71ocean

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well her laptop has things like a web cam and what looks like generic dvd port etic.

Im not sure of Everest would pick up the Driver ID's that will allow for full(or as close as possible) functionality of her laptop.

I'm almost 100% sure that its a generic HP driver that will work all over (XP/Vista) OS base. I doubt that she will ever use a web cam but who knows, that is what im not sure about.
 

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everest wont ID much.

point is, install XP and have the basics ready. once its online windows update will pick up a lot of the drivers and you merely need to fill in the blanks. teh drivers will all be available on HP's website.
 

pepsi71ocean

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thanks, seems like this should be easy to do now.

I don't know why her cousin was so adamant about how ou can't use XP bandwagon.
 

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because he's an idiot, and idiots like to make up stories to cover up their ignorance.

People like him lie and carry on about how awesome they are and how much they know, so when they run into something they dont know they make something up. and then they stick with that story. "oh vista business has great data backup and recovery tools" hmm, she needs data recovered, lets install that!
 

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because he's an idiot, and idiots like to make up stories to cover up their ignorance.


sounds right to me at this point.

I'll agree ive been fuming about his ignorance all evening about this its been bugging me.

Hopefully this dog will be put to rest, her lappy will be fixed, and life will be normal again.

People like him lie and carry on about how awesome they are and how much they know, so when they run into something they dont know they make something up. and then they stick with that story. "oh vista business has great data backup and recovery tools" hmm, she needs data recovered, lets install that!

:laugh:ROTFL:roll::laugh:
 
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I'd still try and run ntfs undelete to see what you could recover. true anything overwritten is gone for good but vista won't cover the whole drive so there may be some data that can be recovered. once you've recovered what you can back it up wipe it and install xp.
 

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I'd still try and run ntfs undelete to see what you could recover. true anything overwritten is gone for good but vista won't cover the whole drive so there may be some data that can be recovered. once you've recovered what you can back it up wipe it and install xp.

when i do whipe her lasppy im using disk kill or somethign from the UBCD to get it clean, however.

IF i am going to try and do a deep recovery i would have to hook the lappy's hard drive up to my computer, and im not sure if they use the same adaptors as a regular hard drive.

Anyone know about this?
 
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Some laptops are INSANELY hard to get xp to work on tho (my old toshiba a215 for example) so that may be what he was talking about. But regardless it can be done. Sometimes you just have to find hacked drivers and whatnot.
 

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when i do whipe her lasppy im using disk kill or somethign from the UBCD to get it clean, however.

IF i am going to try and do a deep recovery i would have to hook the lappy's hard drive up to my computer, and im not sure if they use the same adaptors as a regular hard drive.

Anyone know about this?

if its SATA, its the normal connectors. if its IDE, you can get adaptors for <$5
 
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I'd still try and run ntfs undelete to see what you could recover. true anything overwritten is gone for good but vista won't cover the whole drive so there may be some data that can be recovered. once you've recovered what you can back it up wipe it and install xp.

Vista install won't use the whole disk, that's true, but it will run the integrated defragmentation on a regular basis, so every time defrag runs, more and more potentially recoverable data gets destroyed for ever...

On topic:

There is one thing that I didn't catch. Did the laptop have an OS installed (OEM). Do you have the Microsoft COA sticker on the back? If you do then it should be easy to obtain an OS reinstall disk from the manufacturer for a small fee (<9$, to pay for the media, sometimes for free). At the same time you can ask for the driver and applications disk. Updated drivers should be available on the HP Support site.

The "certified" guy told you WinXP won't work on the laptop, that is not completely incorrect, just missinterpreted. What he meant was probably that you can't install Windows XP on a laptop that easily since you'll need SB/SATA drivers already slipstreamed on the install CD/DVD (Windows XP install was created in the Dark Ages, when everything had a floppy, so when it needs a driver for the SATA controller, it will ask you to insert the floppy disk in drive A: ).

The WinXP OEM disk usually has the required SATA drivers integrated. But if the OS that was installed before was also an illegal copy, then you can't obtain the OEM disk via HP support channels.

If the laptop supports IDE Native/Legacy mode switch in BIOS or if it doesn't have a SATA HDD, but an IDE based one, you can use *almost* any Windows XP install CD and activate it with your key. Perhaps the "certified" guy already tested for this requirement, and found that it was missing, and didn't wanted to complicate his life, so he installed Vista instead.

He must have chosen Vista Business, because of OEM constraints, on some laptops you can't install certain versions of Vista without resorting to some trickery.
 
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Hold up a second here, if the laptop didn't come with install media for the previous OS that means that most likely the laptop HDD comes with a recovery partition. This is essentially a windows install disc directly on the HDD and as a note, WON'T be overwritten upon the install of a new OS as its a seperate partition. It has to be manually deleted. This 'certified tech' sounds like a dumbass so he may have deleted that as well. But then again he may not have. If we know the model number it can be easy to look up. Also, the laptop should have a MS XP key on the bottom of it anyways seeming that's what it came with. If possible (if the recovery partition doesn't work), just reinstall that version of XP, use that key, and you should be able to get all the drivers from online from HP itself.

What's the model? Also, what was the issue that he fixed to make the laptop work?
 

pepsi71ocean

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The reason it broke was because the on/off switch was broken, basically when you close the laptop it closes the switch so it goes into standby. however he kept it unplugged so the system would post and boot.


My copy of XP is valid and its a XP SP3 install disk, i bought it for my computer because i was tired of the reformats due to bad hardware(dead Q6600, 2 HDD's and a poweroutage, bad ram)


Her Lappy came with a recovery partition and OEM software, but he installed Vista buisness so he could recover the files from the old HDD, im not sure why he did this but that is what he did.


So her laptop now basically has a cracked version of Vista business on there that doesn't even have the drivers or anythign, can't even surf the net let along anything else.
 
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Is there a key on the laptop anywhere? It should still have one even with OEM Windows. And just so we're sure the recovery partition is gone for certain? Like I said, if he just reinstalled Vista over the main partition, the recovery partition would be intact.
 

pepsi71ocean

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yes there is an OEM key on the bottom,

and from what i see it looks like he did the whole drive, i didn't get a prompt for recovery, neither did i see any recovery partition in windows either.
 
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Whats the model number of the laptop? Sometimes manufacturers have a funny (specific) method for accessing the recovery partition from startup.



The only reason I'm thinking of using the original installation as it will save you from having to scrounge around for all the specific drivers.
 

cdawall

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its an HP call HP and request a set of restore disks they will cost around $50 and will be legit to the key on the bottom


otherwise just post the model number and i can post all of the drivers for it
 
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Yes, but I can help him for free. :p

Also why I want the model number, they'll all be available online, just more work than recovering from the partition.
 
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