Resolved Fast flashing cursor & not booting up

I have a Toshiba Tecra M1 running WinXP Pro. It started "not responding" with several programs I had running so I ended those using the task manager and also used the task manager to shut down the laptop.
Now when I go to turn on the laptop, all it does it flash the Toshiba logo and then go to a fast blinking cursor.
Did I just kill my hard drive?
I cannot get it to load into safe mode either when pressing F2 but when I do press F2 it does not go to the blinking cursor. It just remains at the Toshiba logo.
Any suggestions as to what I may have done. Could I have accidentally put it into hibernate?
Thanks.

 

If you have a Windows disk, boot to that and check that it sees the HDD. If not, go into the BIOS/startup configuration and see if there are any "settings" or configuration for the HDD. See if there is a HDD testing option. (Read in the User/system manual.) No luck, you would need to take the HDD out and connect it to another computer if you want to try and save any data.

It may be that there is a problem with the boot files or the file system. With laptops there is a possibility of physical damage and (hopefully not) that it has stopped working.

If a Windows disk sees it, you can try doing a "repair ".

Matt

 

I can't see how putting it into hibernate would cause that to happen. Matt's suggestions seem far more plausible to me.

 

[Umm, could you have a disk in the CD/DVD drive and the system is trying to boot to that?]

Just a maybe. Go into the BIOS/Startup configuration settings (is that F2, because booting into Safe Mode or the Startup Options menu is F8). You can look at the settings, but when getting out be sure to do "Save and Exit ". The BIOS may have lost or "forgotten" the settings for the HDD.

 

It won't do anything so I took it to someone to work on it. It was beyond what I could do for it.
Thanks anyway.

 

Good option. Hope it's something simple.

 

You may have installed a same purpose application, normally antivirus applications... us an ultimate boot cd and log on to you system and uninstall the application you have in stalled and run a disk scan...

 

Issue resolved. My laptop got bumped enough that not all the pins in the hard drive were connected.
Whew!!

 

I do like simple solutions

 

Thanks for letting us know.

"Bumped ", be sure to run Error Checking (CHKDSK) with the option to check the disk surface. See if any bad clusters were found because that could mean the drive is going to slowly break down. If so, back up all your data (if you don't have a backing up system, this will be your warning sign).

If you find a resolution, please mark the thread Resolved. I will mark it.

Matt