Harddrive startup problems

My girlfriend's computer has apparently gone dead (or maybe just quadriplegic) on her.  After restarting from a Norton scan and quarantine of her computer, she was greeted with the blue screen of death.  Restarting again she had black screen and a message saying that an ethernet controller was missing and a cable should be checked (she tells me that this was one of the items quarantined by Norton).

Trying to run a repair of the system shows her ~60GB harddrive as the right size, but with unknown content (nothing in terms of partitions, free space, etc.).  Best Buy Geek Squad say they can't read the drive and she needs to find specialists to restore its contents (they estimate a $1500 pricetag for the service).

What can we do to fix it short of replacing the harddrive, which I think is the only solution left at this point?

Thanks for the help in advance.

Enjoy the rebuild.

She's lost the data cos she (and you for not telling her) is a retard.

You go to Best Buy so don't expect any fucking help from me.

>>2 change the vectors so that you may live in a 3d space

>>2
oh. not telling her to BACKUP DATA was what i was trying to say but didnt fucking bother since you cant be fucking bothered learning this shit yourself.

>>2
Aww, ignorant trolls.


So, everyone agrees that the data is lost permanently, right?
If anyone knows how that happened, I'd like to know so I can explain it to her (and know myself for future reference).
Who thinks the drive would still be good enough to just reformat and install an OS on, or should she buy a new harddrive?

Don't use Norton

>>Restarting again she had black screen and a message saying that an ethernet controller was missing and a cable should be checked (she tells me that this was one of the items quarantined by Norton).

What was quarantined? The error message? Your ethernet cable? The NIC?

Also, LOL norton. Also, just get a livecd, recover what you can, reinstall everything, move on. And don't post shit like this on /tech/. Think first.

>>5
lol. we're the last ppl you should be calling ignorant. who was it again who lost data?

For Real Japanese Strip Bar Girls Caught Tape And The Famous Nong Natt Papaya Breasts From Thailand DVD, Please Visit Us At http://www.hotbabes2go.com

Go into bios and disable "auto SATA recognition" and see if windows still detects it.

data not necessarily lost permanently, if you can plug another hard disc into a free IDE slot you can run ERD commander which ive used sucessfully to pull data off of fucked partitions

Take some Viagra and you should be able to start your "hard drive" with no problems

>>11
dont encourage the retard.
>>1
learn the hard fucking way of what NOT to do...

>>13
Obviously that means >>11 has some potential.

>>14
yeah but if you use norton your beyond hope already...

What anti-virus program does someone use if they don't want this problem?

I've tried 3, and they've all given me shit, but Norton gives me the least. What should I be switching to?

>>16
Try AVG. I find it works well, and it's not an asshole about system resources like Norton. And besides, they've got a free version which works just as well as the pro version.
I hear Kapersky (and its variants) is good, but I've never actually used it.

>>16

NOD32.

Its not free (like 16 bux) but it detects better than anything and is super light on resources. And it auto-updates flawlessly without being intrusive.

if what the other people say dosent work, just buy a new hard drive so it wont give you any shit later, and stay away from porn site, they bad for viruses