i need help w/ a 0x0000008E error

[Bongle]

Originally Posted by youngWilliam14

i called HP earlier today, and all i got was some guy in india who put me on hold for a good half an hour

and now it freezes when i try to boot in safe mode

Schnabel, if i could borrow that cd overnight during atlanta, i'd really appreciate it. thanks!

If you have a CD burning program that can burn .iso images (almost all of them, if you dig), then you can get the ubuntu live CD here:
http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

Other things that images are called, to help you looking in your burning app:
-CD backups
-.isos
-.bin/cues
-copied CDs
-backups

I attached a screenshot of what the "burn image" feature looks like in my version of nero. Once you select that, you just look for your .iso, and you're done. Once burned, you just need to put it in your laptop on bootup, and it should load the OS. Be careful though: don't INSTALL linux (it'll wipe out your current OS), just use it to back up your stuff.

If it doesn't check the CD before loading windows, you'll have to change the boot order in your BIOS. You need to make the CD a higher boot priority than the hard drive (where windows is).

------- End of Linux Suggestions ------
Another possibility is you could use the Ultimate Boot Disk, which is a DOS-based dealie which is probably less stressful on your (possibly damaged) hardware than linux would be. It actually supports being installed ONTO a USB stick (if your BIOS supports it) and booting from that, as well as the more standard CD-based bootdisk.

You'd have to do some research to see if it supports read/write to USB drives. It probably does, but you probably have to manually mount it.

Here is the Ultimate Boot CD site: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
Here is a download mirror: http://pcinfo4u.net/ubcddls.asp
Here is a direct link to the zip file which contains the .iso: http://pcinfo4u.net/ubcd/ubcd40.zip