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Resolved Major laptop failure

Discussion in 'Windows XP' started by sonar1313, 2009/08/01.

  1. 2009/08/01
    sonar1313

    sonar1313 Well-Known Member Thread Starter

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    I have a Toshiba laptop which "runs" Windows XP. It does not run it any more....

    When I turn on the computer, I see first the Windows XP boot screen and then the Toshiba screen (at which I'm prompted to either hit F2 or F12 for setup or boot menu if I choose.) I then get the screen that tells me Windows could not load and offers me five choices:

    Safe Mode
    Safe Mode with networking
    Safe Mode with command prompt

    Last known good configuration

    Start Windows normally

    Both "Last known good" and "Start Windows normally" cause the computer to go through its normal startup calisthenics and eventually return to the same menu. Safe mode used to start just fine, until I ran checkdisk. Now safe mode (all three options) won't start up at all. It displays a long list of file names and freezes. It's still accessing the hard drive because the hard drive light is on, but it sits there with its list of files for any amount of time and won't do anything else.

    I'd love to try and boot it from a Windows XP CD, but the DVD player hasn't worked for two years and doesn't respond to cleaning. I have a USB DVD player, but I can't get it to boot from that.

    Help?
     
    sonar1313,
    #1
  2. 2009/08/01
    PeteC

    PeteC SuperGeek Staff

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    I would not be at all optimistic of your chances of recovering the laptop which are not helped by the lack of a functioning optical drive.

    Unfortunately - and really irrelevant in this case - Toshiba do not offer any disk diagnostic software.

    I doubt the laptop offers the facility to boot from a USB device - this is a fairly recent development.

    My best guess is that the hard drive has failed - if you have data on it that you wish to recover the only suggestion I have is to hitch it up as a slave in a desktop via an adaptor - or in an external drive enclosure - for desktop or laptop. If the drive has failed it is unlikely that it will be recognised, but to my mind that is the only way of testing it.
     
    PeteC,
    #2


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  4. 2009/08/01
    sonar1313

    sonar1313 Well-Known Member Thread Starter

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    Thanks for your answer - have gotten it to work though, amazingly enough. Didn't really expect to be able to boot from a USB drive, but it did: I disabled the hard drive as a boot option in setup (removable drive is an option there) and forced it to boot from that CD. Reinstalled Windows and away we went.
     
    sonar1313,
    #3
  5. 2009/08/02
    PeteC

    PeteC SuperGeek Staff

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    Good news and well done :) Thanks for the update.

    I've marked this thread as 'Resolved', please see .....
     
    PeteC,
    #4

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