MAJOR laptop issue

[Dave McFly]

my dad's girlfriend's laptop had a nasty spyware/malware on it all the programs I tried that I use on my PC would not work, so i tried restoring it to an earlier date. but after 5hrs it was not done and had no indication of it's progress (she has windows 7 professional 64 bit) so i tried turning it off and back on but it went right back to the progress screen. so like a TOTAL dumbass I removed the battery and plugged it back in.

now it wont go past the 'starting windows' screen i get a generic blue wallpaper and all I get is the mouse pointer. so I tried rebooting and hitting the esc to bring up the options and selected F11 for system restore. showed loading windows files and a progress bar across screen then it said 'starting windows' then a BSOD saying something like this:

ntfs.sys page_fault_in_nonpaged_area

i tried rebooting and hitting F8 to get into the different safe mode options and I cannot access any of em they all get the same progress bar/starting windows/BSOD

I am HOPING she has some kind of recovery disc but I am PRETTY sure she only got the laptop, manual, and power cord and that is all. I tried support for HP/Compaq no luck other than ordering a recovery DVD but I hope there is something you wise guys can help me out.

EDIT: as a windows 7 user myself I still have my 32 and 64 bit win 7 DVDs that I got last summer. and I do have the win 7 serial key sticker on the laptop if that helps any?

[Deathlok]

Sorry to say that the error you are talking about indicates to me that you are likely to have faulty RAM in the machine or less likely, a fault on the hard drive.

If you can, I'd suggest swapping the RAM out and seeing what happens with the error. If that doesn't clear it, get the hard drive out of the laptop, into a caddy and plug it into another computer where you can back up all the user data, documents and so forth.
When you are satisfied everything is copied across, fully format the hard drive, put it back into the laptop and use that recovery DVD. Although you might find the device is lacking some drivers for the hardware afterwards. If you are going to format and reinstall, I would suggest getting all the relevant device drivers downloaded from the manufacturers web site and burn them onto a DVD. Then if you are missing any drivers after a reinstall, you should have them easily to hand.

[Dave McFly]

sadly she never got around to making a recovery DVD and since I cannot even get into system restore via the F11 key or run even in safe mode looks like I have to take it to a PC repair place thankfully I know of good ones in my town and some are run by friends of mine.

[Dave McFly]

well all my buddy looked at it and said it had a bad HD, so I am gonna have a new HD put in it and have it restored to factory settings. and am gonna chalk this up as an expensive lesson learned (170 bucks) why it is important to have more than just a good antivirus installed in your PC/laptop.

[Deathlok]

Glad to hear you are getting it sorted out. A small piece of advice, you might want to consider some kind of backup software so that if you ever get a similar thing happen again, you won't necessarily have to reinstall from the ground up.

If the laptop has the capacity for a second hard drive, get one fitted that is at least the same capacity as the other. Alternatively, get an external USB hard drive.

Download and install "EaseUS Todo Backup Free" I think the latest version is 4.5
Set yourself up a full backup to run once a week and an incremental/differential to run the other six days.

Believe me, the one day you need this, you will thank the heavens you did.

[Dave McFly]

decided not to pay the 170 bucks for the repair. I got a brand new Western Digital that's the same size/speed as her dead one. and I ordered a replacement recovery disc made for her exact serial number. I ordered the recovery disc monday got them today and they even had a 2nd DVD that had all the drivers too! so I am hoping to get the replacement HD before the end of the week. I have the weekend off so it should not take me long to swap out the old HD, and run the recovery CD and drivers.

Total cost (HD and recovery DVD) 65 bucks with shipping, a LOT cheaper than the 170 before tax the PC guy quoted me .

[Ilayda]

Something exactly sounds like this happened to my laptop years ago, luckily I still had the guaranty for it, then the company changed the laptop and sent me the new one...In most cases like this, it is really tiring and challenging to try and fix it. I always had problems with all computers that I had before... It is just a machine,you know? There will be always a problem, and we will always be trying to fix them... Hopefully, you solved the problem.