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I think we're just about done. Hdds do fail without help from us. You should follow up on your suggestion of trying every test again. You may have missed something. Starman*

Static is usually on the outside surface. It does not matter if the hdd is charged; it matters if something at ground potential touches it, or the terminals in particular. That would make a sudden discharge. If the hdd was left in the car, the charge would slowly disappear once the car...

The additional information you provided shed different light on the problem. If the external drive had been up and running previously (which does not seem to be the case) then the incorrect usb connection would be the focus of the problem. If the external drive setup had never been working...

That explains the situation a lot better. Sounds like the external setup never worked. On further thought I've changed my mind about damage. The internal electronics of the enclosure and the hdd are powered from a dc unit so the polarity is going to be correct. I don't see how reversing...

As I previously said, I've not had experience with hdds that cannot be communicated with. You have not followed up on PC Eye's suggestion of reading the drive with a SATA cable. Did you get one and try it? One way or another you have to do that, even if you have to take it into a repair...

That's bad luck. Rule of thumb is to always have two copies but that's not always practical. Most of my data goes directly to dvd but just the one copy. The important files on my pc are backed up to a second hdd and I've (ironically) just bought an external hdd to back that up. The external...

By "if damaged" I mean if definitely damaged and not due to any other outside faults, mentioned to date or otherwise. I doubt damage would be temporary. Assuming you can connect another hdd successfully to the same pc/usb cable that would put the problem firmly in the fritzed hdd. I would...

If the drive is permanently damaged, it will most likely be the electronics. The platters should be undamaged unless the reverse voltage on the data and power supply lines happened to cause a momentary random write. Trouble is it will very expensive to get the platters put in another chassis...

If you are always using the glass pad with various things underneath, the mouse is never going to work. The light is being reflected from the glass and there is insufficient surface texture for determining movement (how the mouse works). You need a surface with some sort of texture. Google...

How's about a multi-modem card? Never heard of one until I Googled "multi modem pci card". Here's an example. Starman*

I seriously doubt the cable is damaged. At 5V supply it's not exactly going to heat the room - max current at the port should be 500mA. More likely the electronics are damaged. Reversing pins 1&4 is putting the 5V supply to ground, though the drive's electronics may be isolated from true...

Ditto dvds. They must use upper class plastic on your side of The Pond. Starman*

39 degrees is an OK temp. Depending on the motherboard/BIOS settings the fan can be constant speed, or variable maintaining a set temperature. Starman*

What player are you using? Did you do update recently? Starman*

The majority of laptops, especially old models, have onboard graphics. In this case you can do nothing if the chip fails - it's soldered to the motherboard. New motherboard required. If your laptop has a separate graphics card, it can be replaced. The problem is that you don't know for...

Does it make all the normal noises it makes when booting? You could try pressing the reset button to ensure a normal startup. Starman*

I'm not sure what the last message means - no further input required on the problem? As it happened while I was away I fixed a Toshiba with poor display. Combination of brightness setting and sorting out the resume function. The resume was not enabled but seemed to interfere on startup...

So the graphics are "strange" when displayed on another monitor. What kind of strange? Low res colour, garbled picture, flying cows? The laptop monitor shows no activity or light of any kind? Does the laptop boot up OK? If not where does it hang? If it does boot what sort of picture do...

If you don't have any history about how it stopped working it will be very difficult to find the problem. You can connect the vga output to another monitor and see that the graphics etc are working. If that is OK, the display problem could be anything from defective electronics to broken wires...

I can see you have not burned a dual layer dvd. Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?..... Starman*