Today I was using my laptop on the train and it was working fine.

On the return journey, I tried to turn it on but it wouldn't load. It goes to the main start-up screen, where it says "Toshiba", and where is has the options at the bottom, but then it suddenly stops. The monitor is still on, but it just shows a blank screen.

I was thinking it had might something to do with the fact that it got X-rayed at an embassy....either that or as I walked out, I took it straight through the metal detectors without realising that it might damage my laptop.

It's a Toshiba Satellite Pro SP6100..quite old, but important none the less. If anyone has any idea what's happened please tell me.

Thanks

Your hard drive will NOT be damaged by the x-ray at the airport. It's pretty harmless, except when it comes to high speed film, but I wouldn't go sticking your hand in there. I used to be a screener and I never heard any reports of anybody's harddrive getting messed up going through the x-ray.

Everything that has to do with magnetics can damage it.
So don't go through the magnetic detector gate, and don't let them check you with their magnetic stick.

OK thanks for that.

It seems to be a problem with the hard drive- I've took the hard drive out and it works running on a Knoppix CD

The next step is recovering my important data. This couldn't have happened at a worse time, what with Christmas and everything and the fact that I'm about to leave the country.

The moral of the story is: BACK UP YOUR DATA!!
I'm sure everyone who's even a little bit computer-savvy knows that though.

Strangely it seems to work now...
I used an IDE adaptor and I managed to recover my important data..
But I thought I'd put the HD back in the laptop again, and it seems to work..

Only problem now is getting access to the files because I changed the security settings around

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