Re: Laptop left in unusable state

[Doug <dmcgarrett@optonline.net>]

On 12/24/2012 09:04 AM, Agbefia wrote:

To whom it may concern:

I have a Dell laptop Studio that runs on Win7 operating system.i tried to install Debian but something went wrong and my laptop cannot boot and it seems all my data on the hard drive were erased and I cannot access the laptop.Is there anyway I can reload any operating system on the laptop to make it useful again?

Thank you for your help

Sincerely

Komla

 

“The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.”Ted Kennedy

I would do a couple of things.  I'd load live disk GParted, just to find out what the partition scheme is, but DO NOT CHANGE IT!
The GParted disk might have fsck on it, and if so, I'd run fsck on each partition (/dev/sda, /dev/sdb, etc.)  If GParted disk doesn't
have it, load almost any live Linux disk and run it from there.

Then I'd try and boot the laptop and see what happens.

It that doesn't work, there is some kind of recovery setup on the Windows7 install disk.  You'll have to get instructions somewhere
as to how to use it--Google's your friend.

What you're likely to find out along the way is that the hard drive on the laptop has 4 primary partitions, all taken up by Windows.
When you get Windows working again, compact them down to no more than 3 and make an extended partition.  In this
extended partition, you will make logical partitions for your Linux system.  Probably three: /, /home/ and swap. The Linux install
routine will set up those logical partitions.

Good luck.

--doug