Finally, the laptop is working again

by CJM , Tuesday, April 11, 2017, 22:24 (2720 days ago)

I mostly just lurk here, still learning a lot more than I have to contribute. But haven't been on at all for the past three months due to my laptop refusing to boot. Like most laptops, it didn't come with a Win7 disk, just an emergency section on the hard drive that was supposed to let you repair your OS.
Well the repair part was also hosed and didn't even come up, and I was afraid to take it to BestBuy's geek squad or equivalent for fear they would simply re-install windows and wipe out all my files, including my bookmarks and my password file. Finally I remembered I had bought a Win7 Ultimate package, and finally found it. I removed my hard drive and attached it to another computer system and copied everything I could, then put the hard drive back in my laptop. First couple of tries failed, on these UEFI BIOS machines you have to select the UEFI DVD drive boot option, the normal DVD boot option would start the repair utility, but then it would fail saying the OS was incompatible. It wasn't the OS, it was the UEFI that was failing. When I accidentally selected the UEFI DVD boot option suddenly everything just worked and the repair tool was done in less than a minute.
Now I can finally get into the VW settlement website and get my check for buying a diesel Passat, as well as get to this forum again.
I almost learned the hard way, when you keep important parts of your life on your computer, keep them backed-up.