Hi,

Need some help/advice please.  My other half did two silly things to her laptop last night.  First of all she unplugged it (it has no battery installed) without shutting it down against my advice, then she dropped it on the floor a couple of hours after that.

After the drop, Windows 7 would go through the CheckDisk routine each time it was booted.  I was using it this morning, and twice it completely froze requiring a hard reset.  Both times everything stopped responding but the mouse pointer, then about 5 seconds later the mouse pointer froze too.

After this happening twice, the laptop now refuses to boot past the 'Starting Windows' screen.

I've tried booting into safe mode, doing a Windows repair, booting from the Windows install disc etc but nothing gets me past the 'Starting Windows' screen.

I'm thinking that the hard drive is damaged, but before I go down that track, was wondering if anyone had any other suggestions on what the problem may be?


Cheers.