need help with VAIO

[bayoufrogg]

I bought a Vaio in 2002 with windows ME and i left it in my car the other day by accident. It may be a coincidence with leaving it in the car, but now it doesnt go past the SONY screen before it says "MISSING OPERATING SYSTEM." This is one of several messages im getting seeing that ive tried starting it 100 times. It will also say......

"SMART failure predicted on HARD disk 0: (then it has a heart symbol here). WARNING:immediately back up your data and replace your hard disk drive. A failure may be imminent. "

Sometimes when it has this message, instead of having the heart symbol after the begining.....it will have "IBM-DJSA-220-(PM)"

Im not sure what any of this means. I was given system recovery CDs with the computer and most of the time when i try to run them it says "program terminated." One time it DID go through with the system recovery, but when it restarted the computer........after the sony screen it said missing operating system again.

Now.......somehow after turning computer on and off a million times, one time it just decided to come on and went to the desktop. Is there anything that i can look at now since the computer booted up to try and figure out whats wrong. I have the strangest feeling that if I turn it off again it will not reboot.

One time while running the recovery discs it came up and said
"The hard drive is not partitioned. THis utility creates DOS partitions and restarts your computer. If you see this message again, it may be caused by non-DOS partitions on the drive. You must delete the non-DOS partitions to proceed. I clicked yes for it to proceed and it said "creating a C: partition". After a couple more screens it went to a DOS program. I tried to look at directories for all my drives and it would say "invalid media type reading drive A, C, D(whatever drive i was trying to look at).

If youve read all this i really appreciate your time and if anyone has any suggestions or thoughts, Id really like to try and figure out whats going on. Thanks in advance.

 

[TmDrak]

It sound like your harddrive went bad...or something melted...I can't say whats wrong with it as i've never owned a laptop..but have you recently reformatted?

 

[bayoufrogg]

the system recovery reformats everything, and it seems to go through with that. I have the option of renewing my warranty right now for like $220 for the next year; i wasnt going to get it since nothing was wrong, but now......because of this problem.......im not sure if i should. If it IS the hard drive, would the warranty be worth it or just have someone do the work. Im not sure what something like that costs.

 

[MikeReiner]

well, what are the specs of this laptop? (and why the hell did you get a laptop that uses windows me?! =\)

 

[catalyst1]

Yeah, sounds like the hard drive got messed up from the heat. It would seem that the system blocked off the bad sectors since it appears to work somewhat now, but I can't say for sure.

As for the warranty, it sounds like you still have it, so why don't you just take it in?

 

[bayoufrogg]

the computer was bought for me.....thats why it came with ME. I was actually in the process of putting XP on it when i came across this problem. The warranty expired last month, but i called them and told them i didnt recieve my papers like i do every year. They said it would be $220.00 to get it for another year. Im thinking hard drive problems are expensive so its probably worth it.

 

[bayoufrogg]

people on another board said that S.M.A.R.T. is made for error detecting on your hard drive. They told me that the "FREEZER TRICK" may work, but other than that i prolly need to install a need hard drive. Now seeing that i dont know what the freezer trick is......i guess my only option is to install the new hard drive. What does that usually run.....just on average.....dont need specific quotes. Thanks.

 

[bayoufrogg]

well.....as of right now....the computer is a little slow, but seems to be starting up every time. im going to try installing xp and upgrading the memory. thanks for everyones help.