How to Fix a Laptop That Won't Recover a Profile

Laptops are popular for their portability and functionality. If one crashes, it can be frustrating and costly. If a professional handles the problem, you could be out several hundred dollars. However, common sense and some technical skills may help you treat the problem on your own and avoid a hefty expense.

• 1

  Understand different components of your laptop that may be the culprit for the crash. Damaged hard drives, corrupt software, malware, viruses or internal components, such as RAM (random access memory), may be the cause of the problem.

• 2

  Power on your computer and see what happens. If the hard drive sounds like it is struggling or does not spin, it is most likely damaged. Run a disk diagnostic utility -- using the proper software -- to see if it is salvageable. If not, you must replace the hard drive.

• 3

  Reinstall the operating system in the event of a blue screen or another error message indicating that the operating system is corrupt. Do not erase any data and back up your data before you try to fix this.

• 4

  Booting to the BIOS prompt usually means the motherboard is corrupt. For a laptop, this may be expensive and not worth the cost of replacement. You can transplant the motherboard of another computer that has a different problem. Otherwise, you may be better off getting a new computer

• 5

  Find out if your computer crashes when certain programs are launched, or when it is processing data. This is usually due to a virus. You may do one of two things: run a virus eradicating tool to clean the hard drive or reformat the hard drive entirely. Be careful not to re-infect your computer by accidentally reinstalling corrupt data.