Seriouc PC Issues Please help

[cloud1161]

Alby_da_Wolf said:

cloud1161 said:
Hey, just so everyone knows, Vista was the culprit yet again. I installed Windows Ultimate 7 and my laptop is working fine (at least for now I hope). I did have to create a new partition though so if anyone knows of a way to reclaim files from a deleted partition I would really like to know but I am fairly certain you can not recover files once the partition is deleted. C'est la vie.

That's the reason why using a Linux live CD, that runs from CD without installing anything, was the best option to check and exclude HW failures and to backup files.
Anyway, as Samuel told you in the post before mine, acting before you wrote too many things on the new partition you still have some chances to recover some files with undelete utilities.

PS If from now on you make for programs and data files partitions separate from the Windows one, you should greatly reduce the risk of data losses in the future. A separate partition for the swap file too is a good thing, as it will greatly reduce the fragmentation of the system partition (after creating and formatting it, you must tell Windows to use it, I'm using Linux now and my Windows installation is broken and not repaired yet, so I can't check the exact steps you must follow for this, but it's easy, just google for windows separate swap partition).

Well here's the thing.   I started installing Win7 but then I got so far and it said please insert the disc even though it was already in.   So I was figuring the disc was messed up.   Then I tried the Linux disc and it didn't even boot up when I started, so I went back to the Win7 install.  Then I did some research and realized the BIOS priority didn't have boot from disc as the first priority, so I switched that.  By this point I was so focused on Win7 that I completely forgot about the Linux cd... needless to say it was a dumb mistake on my part.  In regards to the partition though, I did make a separate partition just in case something like this happens again.  Thanks though for all your help.