Hi everyone, thank you in advance for reading and replying to this thread.
I have a 6.5-year-old Sony Vaio VGN-CS series with a Windows Vista Home Basic O/S. I'm sorry for not being able to give the full specs of the laptop as it is now completely unbootable, but I believe it has a Core 2 Duo processor, 3-4 GB RAM (I remember upgrading it but not sure how much), Mobile Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator, and 250GB of storage. I also partitioned the drives to two (Drive C and another drive). The battery had some physical damage, so I've been using the laptop with the power plug instead.
The laptop itself has had numerous booting problems in the past, but it has always been resolved by going to the Recovery Centre and restoring the C Drive to its original factory setting while my data is safe in the partitioned drive. However, I couldn't access the Recovery Centre this time.
Here is the chronology of the problem:
- Opened laptop, usual LED lighting up and whirring sounds coming from the machines.
- Received a warning that Windows failed to start and that I should either "Launch Startup Repair (Recommended)" or "Start Windows Normally".
- Chose "Launch Startup Repair", and there was the usual white DOS loading bar.
- Screen turned black while LED and machines still working.
- Moments later, the white cursor appeared and it was moveable.
- The centre part of the laptop below the screen (where the inverter is more or less at) turned very, very hot.
- Nothing happened afterwards.
What I have done to no avail:
- Turned off and turned it back on (it kept going back to the chronology above).
- Unplugged the cable, waited a few minutes, and plugged it back on (ditto).
- Pressed F5, F10, and F11 in the attempt to go to the Vaio Recovery Centre (ditto).
- Pressed F8 and tried every option except I think "Disable Driver Signature Enforcement", "Disable Automatic Restart on System Failure", and "Enable Low Resolution Video" (ditto).
- Pressed F2 to go to BIOS to change the order of boot to optical drive and tried to boot from Recovery Disks (laptop seemed to be making the reading-CD noise but nothing happened).
I'm not keen on trying to open the laptop and check the hardware as I have no experience and don't want to risk accidentally making things worse. I'm already planning to buy a new laptop in a few months' time, but I need to recover the data from this old laptop first.
Anyone can help?
