Laptop won't start up and Repair Disc won't load up

Hi hope someone can offer help what to try next...

I'm trying to get my nephew's laptop (acer aspire 5749) to boot up (apparently battery ran out during shutdown and not worked since) - on power up it gives the option to repair or start as normal. Repair takes you (eventually) to a grey screen with wavy ribbons at the top, a moveable mouse cursor but nothing else happens (even after leaving it for 24 hours). "Start windows normally" takes you to the loading windows screen, then it reboots itself (and the repair options come up again...).

Have booted with a windows repair cd but the same grey screen/wavy ribbons thing happens again and nothing happens (even after leaving it 24 hours).

Booting into safe mode gives no joy either and stops the boot up process during the drivers loading up. It used to stop at one of the AVG drivers so I used the AVG repair utility (midnight commander) to rename all the AVG stuff but then it just stops at another driver instead (now it stops at classpnp.sys).

I've done the memory check on the AVG disk which passes fine so I'm guessing I need to run some checks on the hard disk itself. I've just downloaded the Ultimate Boot CD ( Ultimate Boot CD - Overview ) but don't know which of the utilities you'd recommend I try first?

Any help/advice greatly appreciated. TIA.

Ask you nephew to post and state his problem.

I have a very strong preference for working directly with the owner and not thru a third party.

Others have different viewpoints.

Hi karlsnooks, my nephew is only 12 years old and has given me the laptop to fix so it is now in my possession and I'm trying everything I can for him. All help/advice greatly appreciated...

I can understand, however, having been blessed with two wonderful daughters I also know that children can be amazing and often far exceed us.

Why don't you ask him to post and then you wan watch over and answer any questions he may have.

The young grasp problems and solutions much quicker than we do

Don't know what the problem is with me posting, if he'd have posted all you would have had would be a post along the lines of "my laptop is broken what do i do" . anyway got it sorted now.

Hello Bookem,
I have exactly the same problem with a friend's computer (inept). Could you please share your solution. I and many others would be very grateful.
Thank you.

Hello Bookem,
I have exactly the same problem with a friend's computer (inept). Could you please share your solution. I and many others would be very grateful.
Thank you.

Hi there,

Basically in the end the hard drive needed replacing. I tried doing a full restore to factory settings but that didn't work so had it repaired under warranty. Sorry if its not the solution you were wanting to hear but that's what happened. Good luck with your problem, I know how frustrating it can be, there's a lot of conflicting advice out there...