[Discuss] delete windows user data from dead laptop

[slitt at troubleshooters.com (Steve Litt)]

John Hall said on Mon, 26 Feb 2024 01:18:51 -0500

>Update:
>I believe the best thing I can do from linux is to just format C as
>ntfs then booting will fail and go to recovery. Seeing the system
>reboot randomly in recovery or factory reset mode seems convincing to
>me. Maybe I could print my windows error log from linux if i figure
>out how to hack that.

I think I came in in the middle of this and don't understand the
symptom, but it sounds to me like your computer is intermittently
rebooting itself. I'm going to ask you some questions. If you top post
your answers, please include the question numbers.

1) Do you have nVidea video? This is known to do stuff like you
   describe. This is because nVidea won't share their API. There's a
   reason Linus gave nVidea the finger. I've cured problems like this
   by replacing nVidea with Radeon, most of whose drivers are already
   in the Kernel.

2) Have you performed the memtest86+ memory tester that's a boot option
   of System Rescue CD? If you have bad RAM, all bets are off.

3) Dirty reboot switches and power switches are known to cause
   spontaneous reboots and hangs. As a diagnostic test, remove the
   leads for these switches from the motherboard, and turn the machine
   on and off using a screwdriver to (carefully) short the power switch
   pins. If it works for several days without rebooting, it was
   probably those switches. In that case, replace the power switch with
   a no-light, no-frills $1.99 doorbell switch, and leave the reboot
   switch disconnected.


I've had intermittent problems caused by all three of the preceding.


SteveT

Steve Litt 

Autumn 2023 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21