oh god help me...blue screen W3J

0x00000ED 00x8A4F3590


This happens when I reboot, i had to take a picture of it as it flashed by with my digital camera...I'm pretty sure those numbers are right.


I hadn't changed anything, I shut down my computer last night, went to class, came home and boom blue screen of death...


What can I do? I wanted to just make a new partition and install Windows XP but no asus has to be stupid about how they distribute the OS to their laptops...I have 3 options, all of which include wiping my HD (and I have about 8 months worth of notes, work, and pictures that I can not loose)...

I was going to try to get into the recovery console but I don't see it anywhere. I can't put up in Safe mode, or to the last known configuration either.

 

You can't boot it anymore...?

You don't have 2 or 3 partitions on your HDD? Because you could install an OS on another one

 

yea I can't boot anymore....and I apparently don't have more than one partition because all I have for options are:

1) Recover XP to first partition
2) recover...to entire HD
3) recover to...entire HDD w/ 2 partitions

and if I use the CD i get the added "MS-DOS with CD-ROM Support" as an option up top

 

Go into the Linux forum and ask for help with this, but you should borrow a friends computer (or one at school) and download and burn a linux LiveCD, then use it to create a new partition, then install Windows.

 

You only have a recovery disk?

You could ask if a friend if they have OEM/Retail copy of XP/Vista and install it on the other partitions too.

The last option could be to go a computer repair shop. It might cost you a lot of money too (I believe HDD recovery could be in the $70-100 range)

 

yea i only have a recovery disk because asus only sent me a flipping recovery disk...unfortunately all my friends have laptops too, and all subsequently have recovery disks... I called ASUS when i first received my computer to see if I could get an XP disc but they gave me some BS about how it's pre-loaded and they don't do that anymore, and that they can't....

So is the linux forum on this forum?

 

Why don't you take out the HDD, put it in an external HDD casing, then copy the data to someone else's laptop, and after that, wipe your HDD whichever way you want? After that you can copy your data back to your laptop.

 

Use GParted Partition manager, and follow the steps that Caleb said. You don't need an actual Linux distro to do it.

 

Have you tried booting into safe mode? Or selecting 'Last Known Good Configuration' in the startup menu?

You can always order another sata hdd and restore vista to that. Not the cheapest way, but it'll definitely let you keep all your previous work.

 

Just to add my own 2 cents.

Cost-free solution (more technically involved)

1. Download a Knoppix distribution from knopper.org, or even better, the SystemRescueCD distribution (it has ntfs write support, maybe new Knoppix versions have it as well but I'm not sure).
2. Burn the Linux ISO to a CD.
2. Boot from the CD. Copy all the data files from the Windows partition (/dev/hda1 for instance, usually automounted at /mnt/hda1, if you have a recovery partition it will be different, probably hda2 or hda5) to the data partition (/dev/hda3 or /dev/hda5 or /dev/hda6 depending on how they setup the HDD). If the data partition is NTFS you'll need to use ntfs-3g to mount it.
3. Use Windows restore (F9 during boot) to restore TO FIRST PARTITION ONLY. Make sure it's like I said it in bold otherwise you will lose your data. (restoring from HDD is much faster than from CDs you can use CDs if you prefer)

Reasonably costly solutions:
Get a USB enclosure, remove HDD and put it in the enclosure, insert into a desktop, copy the data, and then wipe the HDD whichever way you want.

Both solutions already suggested above.

Much easier, no need to learn Linux (even though only a few basic commands are needed for the first solution).

 

I downloaded the linuxLIveCD and created a boot-disc with nero but some Caldera DR-DOS crap comes up and I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be doing to run the ISO...Also if I just burn the ISO as pure data nothing comes up when i boot off the disc - it just starts to boot off the HDD

 

You should indeed burn the ISO as an image, not as data.

I don't remember how knoppix starts right now... but you might need to enter some boot label at the boot prompt, like "linux" or something. But all this should be clearly displayed on the screen.

What version did you download? I'd suggest:
KNOPPIX_V5.1.1CD-2007-01-04-EN.iso

It's maybe easier to download the SysRescueCD... I've tried that a week ago and it booted up just fine.