Resolved Temp boot disk for laptop

Ignore this post, it just took forever to boot from DVD this time for some reason:

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Another predicament. Hadn't looked at the machine for a few days, turned it on and NOW I can't get it to boot from DVD either. I get to the 'Toshiba' splash screen and see text at the bottom saying to hit F2 or F12, now if I hit F2 I get into the CMOS options fine and can change anything there if I want, but when I hit F12 I don't get to the boot option screen anymore (i.e. to boot from DVD or hard drive). I just see a cursor in the top left corner and it stays there indefinitely. If I just power up and let it go, I never get the message to hit a key to boot to DVD anymore either. It does the same and gets 'stuck' at that cursor up top left. I can hear it going to the DVD (hear it spinning/accessing it) but never get past the cursor. If the cmos/bios is fine then why won't it boot from DVD anymore?

 

Actually, Evan, turns out the faulty hard drive is what was a detriment to every boot. Once I took it out and booted I went instantly to Mini-Xp AND when I put the windows DVD in I got to the install menu. The issue was that the bios KEPT trying to check the faulty hard drive periodically and locked up on boot. Bois's are too hardware driven to get past a boot issue on one. Remove the 'bad' device and everything works as it should EXCEPT in this scenario I need a hard drive to install to. I'm sure once I put in a new HD I can boot from the install disk and install to the new hd. Even now without the bad HD connected I can boot to the Windows install DVD which I couldn't before. Dang the bad hardware!

 

Well since it's an older model laptop I don't want to sink money into it, I've been pricing 2.5-inch SATA hard drives on the net and have seen a $30 to $100 range (500GB to 1TB). I'd most likely get a 500+GB for $30 just to get it working, can't really justify $100 HD for it.

 

Well, since I'm in Canada this is the best priced one I've found so far, also on Newegg but the Canadian site:

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178125

I guess my only concern left is that it isn't just the hard drive, but the connection from the motherboard to the hard drive. If for whatever reason that isn't working then a new hard drive would also be useless, but without a new HD to test I can't really know for sure UNLESS you know of a way to test that connection without a hard drive actually attached? All testing and diagnostics I've run seem to show the motherboard and all other connections are working fine. I imagine formatting a new HD and installing to it should go fine, but it's a $50 dollar risk we'd have to take heh.

 

Hmm tried something else today. My sister had an older laptop (Thinkpad R61i Lenovo) that has a Sata hard drive (Hitachi HTS542516K9SA00, 160GB, w/WinXP). THAT laptop booted fine, so I took that drive and tried it in the Toshiba, BUT it wouldn't boot either. SO it seems to point to the Toshiba connection also being an issue since it can't boot with either drive. We avoided buying a hard drive this way that most likely wouldn't work either. Seem to me the motherboard connection to the hard drive is also the problem as well as the bad hard drive.

I also tried the Toshiba hard drive in the Lenovo but it also went to a blank screen there with a cursor. One odd think though, the Toshiba hard drive has 4 pins at the end of the connections while the Hitachi does not. Does that mean that the Toshiba needs a special kind of Sata drive? I was under the impression that ANY 2.5-inch SATA hard drive would work in the Toshiba. If not then buying a specific Sata for the Toshiba may still be a fix...

 

There comes a point when you need to say good bye to the bad hard drive.

 

Well, it DOES see it in the bios, but says it can't boot from it.. wouldn't it still get to a windows boot menu regardless of the different hardware? I thought it might adjust to the different hardware and change it on the fly, but then again I've never tried a different OS off another drive before, always worked from scratch. SO since it sees it in the bios a new HD should still fix the issue?

 

Fixed:

Ok I guess this will be my final post:

I put the 160GB Hitachi (with winXP on it) back into the Toshiba laptop and booted to my Windows 7 DVD successfully, then installed a new version of Win7 on that HD. SO now she has Win7 running again on her Toshiba, just on the smaller capacity drive. SO the problem did all stem from the Toshiba hard drive as initially suspected. If she wants to buy a larger drive after, I can install win7 there again, for now she just wants to use it as a backup laptop so the 160GB will suffice. So as you all surmised I can now HULK-SMASH! the other Toshiba drive.

Thanks for all the help!