Laptop Woes....and then light at end of the tunnel!

My beloved HP laptop gave up on me this week...Sunday evening I spent 7 hours trying to repair. It all started last weekend when I was defragging the hard drive. I went to bed whilst it was still running and woke up at about 3am to see the screen still on. I got up to switch off and discovered that it had locked up....oh. No problem, sure it would be fine, I switched off and went back to bed.
Blogging (and work) to be done I tried to switch on Saturday morning...eek..it would only boot in safe mode...whats wrong with it!?
I posted some details of my woes in Facebook and a friend from the UK recommened  Combofix and Malwarebytes which I downloaded and ran...everything seemed fine and I was so thankful for the help...
Then....
Sunday evening everything fell over again..and this time it would not finish it's boot in Safe mode...OMG..I've lost everything. I spent seven hours trying to force the system to boot and nothing, nada, zip.. OK...scream!

I got into bed at 3am and was worried sick about the chance that the hard drive having failed completely. Hubbie, sensing my unease ( I'd woken him up!) told me to stop worrying and take it to the Geek squad in the morning....hmmm not really pacified, but knowing I needed some sleep, I went and got a Unisom and was soon out like a light.

In the morning I was a little zombie like, and the laptop would still not boot...ok lets see if the Geeks can get my data back. Bestbuy is just down the road and within 15 mins my laptop was in their hands along with $150 for a new external drive and the service to copy all the data accross..Good luck I said, not expecting much.

Six hours later my phone rang, a number I didn't recognise.. 'This is Best Buy, your order is ready to collect' the automated message said. No mention as to wether they'd succeeded! I happened to be just accross the road in the book store, so I hot footed it out and was back at Bestbuy within 5 mins.

'Here you go' said the cheery Geek Squad lady....Did you manage to get the data off ? Yes she said, all done....wow!

Ok so trauma over, I had my data, I'd need another laptop, but for now I could get to all my files with my new (and quite cool) external drive!

Last night I looked at my forlorn laptop sat on the table....I just couldn't give up on it, it would be like giving up on a friend. The least I could do is try and restore to it's original state and use it for some simple tasks..

I went to my husbands gaming PC (don't tell him !!) and started to look for some solutions....and then it occured to me, if only I had some restore disks....hmmm let's see...I got the PC model and Googled restore disks...low and behold there was a website where I could download and only £9.95....well it had to be worth a go.....

About an hour later I had a restore disk burned, but being nearly 10.30 I was ready for bed...I'd try in the morning to rescue.

This morning the task was simple....try and breathe life into my laptop...

And guess what.... contarary to what I expected it didn't wipe everything that was on my laptop, it deleted all the drivers and then loaded all the originals.....hmmmmmmm and now...I'm working on it!...

I'm still going to look at getting a new laptop...I don't think it's the happiest, but for now, I'm back and running again....