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Coffee spilled on HP G70 keyboard - cannot restart

M

MMM

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Dec 10, 2012
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7
HelloSomeone (not me) spilled coffee on the keyboard this past Saturday morning. After seeing things were not working right (including a loud beep upon trying to restart the computer) I unscrewed the keyboard, dried it as best I could, and left the keyboard upside down on a paper towel for 48 hours.I attempted to restart the computer today, and it went into StartupRepair. I let it run, and it tried restarting. That didn't work, after some stuff was running (including the loud beep) upon this restart, StartupRepair ran again and failed. I should add that the keyboard did not seem functional (though the trackpad was), so I plugged in an external keyboard into the USB port (which worked).

I got the following from StartupRepair

Code: 
:------------------------------------------------
Startup repair cannot repair this computer automatically
Problem SignatureProblem 
Event Name: StartupRepairV2
Problem Signature 01: AutoFailover
Problem Signature 02: 6.0.6006.18000.6.0.6001.18000
Problem Signature 03: 4Problem Signature 04: 131074
Problem Signature 05: BadPatch
Problem Signature 06: BadPatch
Problem Signature 07: 0
Problem Signature 08: 1
Problem Signature 09: SystemRestore
Problem Signature 10: 0
OS Version: 6.0.6001.2.1.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1033
------------------------------------------------

It is now giving me the otions to either:"View diagnostic and repair details" OR"View advanced options for system recovery and support"I can also click "Finish". I've haven't clicked on any of the above so far.Is there some way I can fix this mess with any of your assistance here? I greatly appreciate any of your help...(Just previous to this, I had another problem with the computer - I don't know if this is needed as a reference of sorts:

Vista based HP laptop restarting on its own - - Microsoft Community
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Hi -

It appears from the error info that System Restore failed.

Try and re-run system restore from Recovery.

P8 - http://bizsupport1.austin.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c01662115/c01662115.pdf

Boot into Recovery with Windows DVD or using the HDD recovery partition. Select "Windows System Restore".

HP G70 Maintenance and Service Guide - http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c01573159.pdf

Specs - Product Specifications HP G70-250US Notebook PC | HP® Support

Software & Driver Downloads HP G70-250US Notebook PC | HP® Support



Regards. . .

jcgriff2
 
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Thanks!Before I attempt this (I believe my model has the recovery built in - I've seen a "D" drive when viewing "Computer"), is there a chance that performing any of these steps will make me lose data, etc. on my hard drive?Any particular steps I need to take to prevent any losses while trying to perform the recovery? I've never done anything like this, and don't want to screw something up...I left the computer in the state I initially wrote about. Should I shut it down and then turn it back on, holding down F11 to force recovery?
 
Hi -

A Recovery menu will appear giving you choices such as a full reccovery (which you DO NOT want to do right now), "Windows System Restore" - which is what you want.

I am unable to locate a picture. Here is additional info from HP.

See "Starting a recovery from the hard drive and the computer is off" -

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c00809678&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&product=18703#N383

You will be doing the opposite of #5 - you want to select YES for Windows System Restore -
5. On the Microsoft System Restore screen, select No YES , and then click Next .
Click to expand...

I hope you can get into Recovery, but I suspect that is exactly what the system tried to do already when "Startup repair" failed.

Regards. . .

jcgriff2
 
Thanks.Just to be sure, I'm seeing "You will be doing the opposite of #5 - you want to select YES for Windows System Restore" noted as #7 when viewing the link you gave:Performing an HP System Recovery (Windows Vista) HP Pavilion Notebook PCs | HP® SupportThis is the same point in the process, right? Do I otherwise follow all steps (previous to this one) exactly the same way HP notes?:"On the Welcome to the Recovery Manager screen, click Next""On the Software Program Re-installation screen, select No , and then click Next""On the Hardware Driver Re-installation screen, select No , and then click Next"Also, HP notes I should "Disconnect and remove all external devices such as printers, USB drives, and memory cards" first. As my keyboard is toast, I have an external keyboard in the USB port currently. Will I be able to leave this in and perform the other functions?Any other precautions I should take first/while doing this? (I apologize for my text being all lumped together - my old computer doesn't seem very compatible with this forum...)
 
You can try the restore just the way you described, but I fear the coffee went through the KB into the hard drive, if that is the case then the restore will also fail as the the restore data is on the same drive as windows is currently just a different partition of the drive.
 
Thanks.Could I possibly damage the drive - or at least some of the files on it - by attempting the recovery described above (by using it when it's in a fragile state, so to speak)? Would it be potentially safer to have someone work to recover the data first?
 
Any further use of the HDD may result in file loss or making it more difficult/ impossible to retrieve data.

Is that your #1 goal at this time - retrieval of files?
 
I'd like to keep as much as possible. As much as I want the computer to work, I'm looking at this as "First do no harm". Hopefully the "System Restore" I ran didn't hurt anything.

I guess I should just shut the problem computer off at this point?
 
I mean are there vital files on the drive that you absolutely must have?

Or are you just trying to get the Vista system back up in working order as cautiously as possible?

I'm asking because it is very easy to take the hard drive out of that system and connect it to another computer by using an adapter plug so you can try to copy files from it.
 
I have the very most important files on CDs, but there's a lot of stuff I'd rather not potentially damage/not recover, including some pictures I've taken that I didn't make discs of yet. I'd rather preserve everything...
 
Thanks everyone.

My problem with attempting that is my other computer is a Mac (am I allowed to say that here? ;) ), and besides it being basicallly full, its old and tired and I doubt it would be appropriate for a job like this.

My concern is that, whoever does a transfer gets everything they can off it, as best as possible. I'm not familiar with the intracies of this sort of thing, beyond hearing of some people being able to recover and transfer a possibly damaged drive better than others. How they do that, I don't know...
 
Depends on if the MAC can read the PC hard drive. As I understand it, a MAC can read NTFS, but cannot write it (so you won't easily be able to move the data back to the PC (if you use a FAT32 external drive on the MAC you may be able to write to it - but will be restricted to files no larger than 4gB).

I'd suggest borrowing a friends computer and getting an external hard drive ($50-$60 US in most shops, likely cheaper online) and transferring things that way.

Another option is to see if you can use a tool like the Ultimate Boot CD or a Live Linux distribution to copy from the broken PC to an external hard drive.

There's basically 3 levels of data recovery:
1 - copying the stuff from the old hard drive to other media (such as another computer or an external hard drive)
2 - using software to help recover data (tools like PCInspector (free) or GetDataBack ($80 US))
3 - professional data recovery where they dismantle the hard drive and move the platters to another hard drive (very, very expensive)

So, we try #1 - if that doesn't work, then we move on to either #2 or #3 depending on the symptoms.
 

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