Asus V1S - Won't Start Vista after Asus Logo/Sound..URGENT HELP

After following a lot of positive messages on the V1S here, I purchased one in September and have had problems ever since.

Yesterday, I had to do a system restore as for some reason a Windows Update had not worked properly (Asus V1s shut down problem caused this)...

It worked fine until I turned it off yesterday night, where it took around 15mins to turn off. Today morning I tried turning it on before my lecture but now the boot is on a continual loop - it says Asus, does the jingle then restarts.

I'm not very tech savvy with branded PC's/Laptops..I've always made my own PCs with the generic BIOS's that come with motherboards, so haven't been able to do anything....When phoning ASUS they just said to try pressing the reset button on the back (which I did...but didn't feel anything being pushed!)..Nothing happened.

I do NOT want to perform a complete vista reboot...until my data (3months of lecture, class, reading AND revision notes for Law and my personal files) are ALL backed up...I have exams next week and this really doesn't help when ALL my work is on the PC.

My cousin has a Vista Business CD...would I be able to use this for the system repair option? Seeing as Asus' branded disc is just for recovery.

Otherwise what options are available to me for backing up the data, and how....

Please help...Am so frustrated! Really need to sort this out by today

 

Can you go into BIOS and check if your hard drive is being detected or not ?

 

best thing to do is pop out the hard drive and buy a usb to laptop drive converter from maplins.co.uk (about £25), then backup all your stuff off the drive onto another pc, then put the drive back into the laptop and use the recovery dvd to get everything re-installed. If this doesn't work then I'd say the problem is more serious than just corrupt data and could be a problem with the laptop or the hard drive itself. You'll soon know once you try the USB adapter.

 

It finds the Toshiba Harddrive! So I'm hoping that suggests my data isn't lost.

Will try out the Maplin's idea if all else fails!

Thanks guys

 

I suggest a USB enclosure instead, e.g. Vantec Nexstar. Make sure it's serial ata. That can be used later on for an external harddrive, if you need one.

Or maybe that's what dj045 means, as well.

 

oh! I already have one of them (but for a larger PC harddrive)..would that do the same job if i replaced them? Might just try that

Won't the Vista Business DVD recovery option do anything?

 

No, it won't work you need a 2.5" enclosure. In fact you CAN use it if it is SATA but the HDD will sort of dangle around inside I think... that's not good but for a quick backup it'll do (make sure you don't bend pins or anything).


Note that you can use the recovery DVD/CDs recover to 1st partition only, so if all the data is on the D: partition, you'll be fine.

But I expect it is not... (next time put it all on D:, that's good practice and saves you from this type of headaches)

 

(I edited my message with more details)

 

I meant..using an original Vista disc for the repair option?

Will start using D from now on...only realized its purpose now!

Thanks alot.. props given

 

You can try repair but I still suggest BACKUP FIRST.

 

Many thanks again...I'm at University at the moment but once I get home I'll let you know how it went.

 

I think you can boot using the Vista DVD - choose recovery option and there selct Startup Repair and that should fix any booting problems if any.... Dont worry as long as you follow this step exactly it wont erase any data on your hard drive....

If that doesnt work then use a SATA to USB adapter cable or a SATA enclosure and connect the laptop hard drive to an external PC and backup all the data... Then put back the hard disk on the laptop and remove all the partitions and stuff on the laptop and make a fresh Vista install..... Make sure you have data partitions so that you can keep the data on those....

 

I disagree. If you have doubts on whether the HDD is operating correctly (which could very well be the case here), the VERY FIRST thing to do is backup the data.

 

Believe me dude - the Vista Startup Recovery only searches for the MBR and the boot files on C: (or the Vista partition) and fixes them and nothing more.... If your hard drive partition is READABLE alone it will be able to fix.... Also if your hard drive partition is READABLE alone you will be able to backup the data to some other drive.... So it doesnt make a difference....

 

Well I could argue that if the HDD is faulty its behavior is unpredictable and that access to the MBR might ruin it But you're probably right. Whenever I'm in doubt I try to recommend the safe route.

 

Thanks guys! I chose not to try backing up my files first, as I had a strong feeling that it was just an issue of the vista updates and the asus v1's problems with hibernation/sleep modes occasionally that caused the start-up files to be corrupted.

A quick click on the Vista DVD repair function helped fix the error, and now I'm working fine phew!

Thanks guys

 

Backup alot ^^ Ive had this happen to me in the past, I now use a windows port of GmailFS, It appears as a extra hard drive on my desktop and gives me 5GB of online disk space to backup all my important data, its free and fast ^^ and I Can access it from anywhere.

 

For future reference, re: needing an SATA enclosure, ACTUALLY...

If you have a SATA-capable desktop PC near by, you can actually use your SATA laptop hard disk directly on a desktop.

Unlike the PATA laptop hard disks that use a smaller 40+4-pin connector, the SATA laptop hard disks are identical to their desktop counterparts.

There is also the issue of filesystem-level permissions. If you mount an NTFS drive from another system, you will need change/remove the attributes of the files on the system before being able to copy them properly.