There is someone who might help you out. His name is Paul Eeckhout, (website: here). he's fixed my previous laptops on multiple occasions, especially when I had a similar problem to deal with as yours. That is, even if it cannot be fixed as such, he is very good at retrieving data. Coincidence or not, I'll have to contact him soonish because my laptop battery is dead. I get a message when I boot up saying that it needs to be replaced so that's pretty serious then. But yeah, my laptop is now almost 3 years old & batteries are HP's weakness I've been told.

Anyhoo, he lives pretty near me (Trolieberg, that's inbetween Kessel-Lo & Boven-Lo) Very small house, not a lot of parking space, FYI.

Edited at 2012-11-04 05:57 pm (UTC)