Sony PCG-7D2L not booting

[Wehbeast]

Hey my friend has a Sony PCG-7D2L Sony Laptop, he dropped something on the screen and broke it. I tried to hook it up to my monitor to get his files off the HDD. When I turn it on it turns on, it starts to load windows then stops, I guess it re-starts at this point?

[SpireTECH]

In what way does it "stop" loading? Does it hang at the same screen indefinitely? Does it reboot and try to load again? Does the screen go blank?

Have you tried loading in safe mode? (Press F8 when Windows is first loading.)

If he dropped something big enough to destroy his LCD, then it's possible there is other damage to the laptop as well.

[Wehbeast]

It gets to the Windows loading screen then it will just get stuck on that or go black and restart the pc. Tried loading it in "Normal", "Safe Mode" and "Last Known Configuration Mode"

[SpireTECH]

This could potentially be the result of a wide range of issues. Before I get into the nitty-gritty, I want to iterate the fact that all of these steps could potentially corrupt or erase the data on the hard drive forever. If it's important data I HIGHLY recommend taking it to a professional. SpireTECH has a data recovery service which is available as either on-site at your house or drop-off service at our office.

The first most likely cause is a damaged hard drive. Whatever fell onto the laptop could have impacted the case of the hard drive, or simply shocked it hard enough to cause damage.

Since you simply want to recover the data on the hard drive we would typically boot to a Linux Live USB stick or CD. We use our own Linux Live distro, but for this purpose Kanotix (http://www.kanotix.com/changelang-eng.html) or Knoppix (http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html) will work fine. If you're not familiar with Linux this task could be a little daunting.

Another option is to try and repair the bad sectors. This can be achieved by booting to a Windows setup CD and running "chkdsk.exe /r" from the recovery console. It's important that the Windows setup CD is either the same version as the laptop, or a later version. Otherwise the utility could corrupt the data entirely.

If the Linux Live CD is hanging on boot as well, it indicates a hardware problem with another component. In this case, your last option is to remove the hard drive from the laptop and place it in a 2.5" external hard drive enclosure. Then you can simply plug it into any working computer and copy the files off. I'm not sure about this model of laptop in particular, but I know may Sony models require taking the whole laptop apart to get at the hard drive. So it may be best to take it to the professionals at this point.

[soupey]

if u know how to, just pull the hard drive out and get an IDE adapter to fit into it, or if its a SATA drive get a sata adapter, could also use usb portable hard drive enclosures to do the trick, whatever u have laying around or is cheapest at the store. there is likely some hard drive damage since it won't load up, but im sure u can still get most of ur info off it and reuse it after reinstalling and running diagnostics on it.