Travel Technology - Blue screen crash. Help?

Blue screen crash. Help?

I need a pro´s help. I recently had a crash in Windows that´s left me baffled. I was watching a video on my laptop, when I suddenly heard a wierd noise. I ignored it at first, but it kept creepìng up on me. Eventually, the noise lead to a crash, and the blue screen came up. Here´s what it said (in brief)

Kernal_Data_Inpage_Error

***STOP: oX0000007A (and 4 more successive blocks of numbers (just like this one) but containing a combination of 10 different characters & numbers)

then it wrote

atapi.sys

It started to dump physical memory
physical memory dump complete

Through the process, a tapping noise could be heard coming from inside the latop (almost sounded like a clicking clock)

I recently installed a video code called Vp7 from On2 technologies, is that the culprit? I needed to watch a video. That´s the only reason I installed it. Other than that, no other installations recently except of course, windows updates.

Another strange occurance, three seemingly harmless programs have added themsevlves to startup. Without my doing. They are

mHotkey.exe
Soundman.exe
and scardsvr.exe ( i dont recognize this one)

Also, after a few crashes, I decided to enter BIOS (everything looked ok there), and then at one particular boot, the operating system failed to load. I swear I didn´t change any BIOS settings. In fact, on boot, it says BIOS is shadowed now.

What do I do? I can´t load Windows? I can´t even load safe mode. I can only enter Bios, that´s about it, and it looks normal in BIOS.

Help

I run Windows Home edition

Bad news.

Your hard drive has crashed. You need to replace it and reinstall from scratch or from backups. You have backups, right? (at least I hope you have backups for your important data, even if you don't have a complete recent system image.)

-David

sounds to me like the hard drive is still going round and round. If that is the case, you may be able to get most or a lot of your data off the drive. You need to physically remove the drive from the computer, then plug it into another computer as a slave. you may be able to see most/all data. remove the data, as fast as you can.

you can then transfer that data to your new HD in the laptop.

If you do not have the good backups, and your laptop did not come with a windoz disk, call the laptop mfgr, and ask for a set of disks. they may charge for them.

i dont have backups. i think im screwed. will this be covered my back 3 year extened warrenty? it is a generica laptop )future shop model, windows xp

It's probably covered, but that's for a replacement drive, not data recovery if that's necessary. There's been a rash of disk crashes recently in this forum, makes me scared (though I just ordered a replacement disk because I'm outgrowing mine).

This thread may help in the recovery if it is the disk, couple software recommendations and other good stuff.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=634726

I too am kinda worried about my HD crashing and have been regularly backing up
Is it difficult to replace a hard drive? I am not terribly computer savvy but i have restored a couple of '69 novas to original condition.

Should i just fork over the dough and let someone else handle it

One thing, though -- isn't atapi.sys the driver for the CD/DVD drive? Those tend to be pretty finicky -- I've had them fail in laptops before. Can your laptop boot from a USB drive? I'd try doing that before I'd replace the hard drive.