Laptop - Need your advise. (broken)

[mace¬]

OK, so a few weeks ago the laptop screen broke. Took it to be repaired and he did the screen then said the hard drive had packed up so had that replace. Got home all fine and all was working.

Fast forward a week, little un has now decided to spill a pint of squash all over the laptop. When I found this out I took the battery out, drained the thing out of all the liquid and stood somewhere warm to dry.

Fast forward another 48 hours and the thing switches on fine but when it goes to boot it says that no boot device is found. Get this message:

Question 1) Is the hard drive fucked?
Question 2) If it is fucked if I take it back to the place who fixed it, could it be them?
Question 3) If it isn't fucked and just needs an OS installing, I haven't got a restore disk fro windows 8 what options do I have?

Thanks, Advice away.

 

[Typhoon]

1) No boot device would mean hard drive isn't being read/failed. Operating system is stored on hard drive and is default boot.
2) I'd be surprised if it was them especially after the pint of squash went over it - they could have not clicked the master wires in correctly but that would be one hell of a coincidence. Saying that, my boss got a new laptop and it was all fine, within 2 weeks the hard drive failed out of the blue so it could have just been a bad hard drive that was put in.
3) The OS shouldn't just erase it's own partition unless you've requested it too. About getting Windows 8 back though, you should have a sticker on your laptop (normally on the bottom) and that should have your serial number on it. You can download Windows 8 from Microsofts website and register it with your serial number.

 

[mace¬]

That is one top quality fast response. Hero.
So in a quick question to your answers.
If I download the windows 8 to a different PC, create a boot from a USB (when I figure out how) and try to reinstall the OS it might possibly work?
If not, another new hard drive?

 

[Matt W]

What flavour squash?

 

[Typhoon]

That is one top quality fast response. Hero.
So in a quick question to your answers.
If I download the windows 8 to a different PC, create a boot from a USB (when I figure out how) and try to reinstall the OS it might possibly work?
If not, another new hard drive?

Your first point of call would be to take it to the shop that did it, ask them to check it over and make sure it's all connected up or ask a friend who is comfortable taking it to bits and checking for you. If it's f*cked then I'd just replace the hard drive, they're very easy to install so I'd do it yourself, and as you said create a bootable USB of Windows 8 and install that to the new hard drive.
Once the new drive is in, go in to BIOS and choose the USB drive as the first boot priority.

 

[mace¬]

Top man thank you. I'll bring it into work tomorrow to get someone to check all is wired up OK. The head fish gutter got some new knives for his birthday. He said he can do it.
Then I'll go from there....

 

[mace¬]

What flavour squash?

Blackcurrant. not sure on the mixture ratio. Was in a plastic frozen tumbler. Pint sized.
Not sure of time of spillage to time of discovery. I didn't notice until she was pushing a floating laptop around the dining room table with Captain Blackbeard Playmobil commanding his new Laptop battleship.

 

[Matt W]

Blackcurrant sounds less damaging to electronics than orange squash so you might be lucky.

 

[mace¬]

Was double strength though.

I've heard that Robinsons Orange squash is so weak and flavourless it has been scientifically proven to have performance enhancing qualities on electrical equipment.

 

[Typhoon]

Don't want to be the bearer of bad news but double strength squash normally deletes files within your systems registry. Normal squash doesn't!

 

[Addicted]

It was an act of god, he was foreseeing your fatal flaw in grammar/spelling with regards to the title, and so has punished you for it early, think Jason Bourne, except slightly different.

1. Laptop - Need your advice
2. Laptop - Advise me please!

Also, with regards to container of squash - did you know if you add one character to beaker, it becomes breaker? With that in mind, they are very dangerous (like Jason Bourne), should be illegal imo.

 

[mace¬]

Advise taken on board thank you. Tbh I'd like to advice God to mind his own f**king business.

I am going home to read the label on the double strength squash. If it doesn't state that tipping onto an electrical device may cause damage I am going to write to them to complain.

 

[mace¬]

Stripped the laptop down last night (WTF having to get to the inside from the top sde!), had a play about and cleaned up the hard drive. Connected it all back up, switched it on and Windows fired up. 10 minutes later crashed and a scan now shows loads of hard drive errors.

Spoke to Microsoft about getting a product key for windows 8 and they told me to get on.

Next steps..... new hard drive..... and figure out what to do about an OS.

 

[Don]

Is there not a windows 8 sticker with a serial number on the bottom? If you bought the device from a reseller, they should have an OEM key which if you download the correct version from Microsoft you will be fine. For the sake of £40 or so, I would get a new HDD and go from there...least it will not be potentially screwed.

 

[dajones]

I'm not 100% but I think Windows 8 OEM has the product key stored in the BIOS. Installation should check for that digital key and install then activate. I could be wrong as CS houses the most smart arses I've seen.

 

[Addicted]

New thing to me if that's the case, never heard of that before personally, but out of touch with the OEM scene .

But yeah, should have a key SOMEWHERE, if not, try and boot in, you can get the key when ur in windows.

Interestingly, Microsoft are offering everyone a free upgrade to Win10, even those with hacked/cracked/fake copies of Windows.

 

[dajones]

http://www.intowindows.com/how-to-recover-windows-88-1-product-key-from-bios/

 

[mace¬]

Cheers guys. No sticker on the bottom or anything with any windows details.

I'll have a look in the BIOS although the link doesn't work.

 

[Goodj]

have you tried switching it off and on again?

 

[mace¬]

Fucccccckkkkk! I did it the wrong way round. I did On then Off? Could that be why it isn't working?

 

[Goodj]

Have you tried using a potion from Gandalf?

 

[mace¬]

lol at getting any help from Gandalf. Some famous Doctor, not sure who, Doctor Fox? is paying him a fortune to wipe his hard drive or something. Seemed really insistent that he did it now!

 

[Goodj]

Someone must have rustled his jimmies.

 

[Tkul88]

You can usually take the hard drive out and slot it in another machine. That'll tell you if it's working or not. May get driver errors as the hardware isn't the same, but least you can see if it'll boot into windows or not.

Usually liquid onto a laptop means the main board is fooked. It shorts the circuitry Also sugar has a bad effect on the board (from what I remember) when it dries.

 

[Tkul88]

Microsoft have also made it very hard to get a download copy of windows 8 since they stopped their digital river service. Be very careful getting one from random sites as it's incredibly easy to alter a windows image, injecting all sorts of malicious code takes seconds for them.

 

[CrippsCorner]

have you tried switching it off and on again?

My car CD player (yes I'm old skool) stop ejecting CDs ages ago. Parked the car up on the drive 4 months ago when I had to stop driving due to an eye operation... anyway, turned it back on this week as I'm now driving again and low and behold the CD player is working perfectly again.

So my new advice for people is turn it off, wait 4 months, and turn it on again :up:

 

[mace¬]

My car CD player (yes I'm old skool) stop ejecting CDs ages ago. Parked the car up on the drive 4 months ago when I had to stop driving due to an eye operation... anyway, turned it back on this week as I'm now driving again and low and behold the CD player is working perfectly again.

So my new advice for people is turn it off, wait 4 months, and turn it on again :up:

Do you charge by the hour?

 

[CrippsCorner]

Only for men.

 

[KDF]

You can usually take the hard drive out and slot it in another machine. That'll tell you if it's working or not. May get driver errors as the hardware isn't the same, but least you can see if it'll boot into windows or not.

Usually liquid onto a laptop means the main board is fooked. It shorts the circuitry Also sugar has a bad effect on the board (from what I remember) when it dries.

In every liquid spill I've seen it's the motherboard, not the disk. Keyboard generally directly drains though to motherboard. OP would have been best to strip down the laptop and rinse the whole lot with deionized water then dry fully.