My original plan was to slave the drive to another machine and run a key finder like this one
However, I was lucky. I slaved the drive and ran a error checker and let it attempt to fix the errors. When I put it back into the laptop, the system could see the recovery partition and everything went swimmingly after that.
Finished the recovery, listed the key and stuck it on a label on the underside of the laptop, just in case.
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I now have another one to sort, with similar problems - worn CoA sticker, unresponsive HDD and no disks.
But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Part of the chassis has been melted - with a lighter or soldering iron, not really sure, but it has a hole in it big enough to push a pen through. The keyboard is bent, and sunken in the middle - like someone has had a REALLY bad case of 'rage quit' and punched it square in the middle. Oh, and one of the memory slots is broken, presumably from the blow delivered to the keyboard.
Seriously, I may upload pics of this thing.
Other than that, it looks okay.
