Desperate for help. Complex problem within. Want a challenge?

19543261

As title reads.

My Dads Toshiba laptop is not working and I'm eager to fix it myself.

The issues:

• Black screen after windows logo.
• Only the cursor and the power button responds.
• Cant access Safe Mode.
• Doesnt load disks correctly; "Windows is loading files" and then returns to black screen.

Naturally, I cant access the recovery console or anything of the like; I cant reinstall windows; I cant give back the laptop, saving money.

Help.

What could this be? Would it be possible to hook up the hardrive to a desktop, transfer files, and load windows onto a newly bought hardrive for the laptop? This is something I really want to avoid. I've had a number of complicated pain-in-the-ass problems with computers and I've always been able to resolve them for friends and family. I dont want my record spoilt >:(

Note: I've googled this problem and it seems everyone is able to boot from disks.

yoyo

Have you ran diagnostics on the hard disk? It does sound like hard disk failure so if necessary I would pull the drive out and backup firstly, then diagnostics. If they fail then it's new hdd time . It isn't that big a job to install a new hard disk and re-install OS, there are some exceptions though. If you've installed Windows before and drivers/are familiar with the process that's all good . Regarding the boot disk issue, the optical drive could have failed or bad media. A 4GB USB key will do for Vista onwards, a 1GB for XP. You'll need to make it bootable though.

Nick

19543261

Thanks for your reply, Nick.

My primary issue is trying to avoid spending money. I'm wriggling and struggling trying not to accept that I'll probably have to do that. The information on the disk is sensitive and at the moment I've nothing to back it up on.

I've just removed the hdd (yeah, should have done this earlier) and it's booting from the disk. An obvious step to take, I guess.. strange why the hhd would affect such a thing, though, no? Surely if the drive is dead, it wouldnt have an impact? Or perhaps it's just damaged.

I'm going to hook it up to something else and take a look. Will report back in case any of this may help someone else.

fedorafennec

This can happen if there are bad sectors on the drive that are being accessed during startup. I recently saw a laptop that would freeze on startup that was fixed by running chkdsk from the console off a windows installer disc. You could also do this if the drive is connected to a desktop with windows on it.

19543261

Yeah thanks, fedora. I had connected it to my desktop and it ran chkdsk by itself, this didnt fix the issue.

The hardrive was showing up as unformatted RAW in the windows hardrive manager. I figured that whatever part of the drive told the computer about it was damaged, a problem I had before, so I did a fixmbr and fixboot, and ran windows startup repair. It lasted for about an hour, restarted the computer, began again and said it couldnt correct the problem.

But just now I've checked the drive again on my desktop and now everything on it is accessible again. I kept reading about RAW hdd's and all the advice was that it needed to be reformatted. I knew that wasnt right.

I'm still not able to boot from it, though.

KAGY

19543261 wrote: »

Yeah thanks, fedora. I had connected it to my desktop and it ran chkdsk by itself, this didnt fix the issue.

The hardrive was showing up as unformatted RAW in the windows hardrive manager. I figured that whatever part of the drive told the computer about it was damaged, a problem I had before, so I did a fixmbr and fixboot, and ran windows startup repair. It lasted for about an hour, restarted the computer, began again and said it couldnt correct the problem.

But just now I've checked the drive again on my desktop and now everything on it is accessible again. I kept reading about RAW hdd's and all the advice was that it needed to be reformatted. I knew that wasnt right.

I'm still not able to boot from it, though.

Try to find something to back that drive up to. A friend pc or something. The more you mess with a disk the more likely it will worsen beyond repair.
The standard way is to use a Linux machine and run some free utilities
Ddrescue - makes a copy of the hard disk errors and all as a file on the working computer so you can try lots of different approaches without stressing the physical disk
Testdisk - tries to repair file system etc
Photorec - if all else fails this tries to find files on the disk

19543261

Thanks KAGY I really appreciate your reply. I was adamant on not going to sleep till this was sorted but you talked some sense into me. I'll wait till I have another hardrive to back everything before I make anything else worse.

riclad

TRY and use a livecd eg mint 7, runs from cd ,back up your data to usb drive,
or try here ,
http://www.ntfs.com/



10-days Trial
Download
Size: 171 MB
Active@ Boot Disk for unbootable PC
It's a bootable CD/DVD/USB disk that allows you to boot up any computer and fix most startup and PC configuration problems. Full access to non-bootable PC Image-based physical or logical disks backup and restore. Lost folders and files recovery. Create, delete, format partitions on SSD/IDE/ATA/SATA/SCSI hardy editing partition table.

also data recovery toolkit, It is a set of tools for analyzing problems with NTFS partitions and files, and NTFS Data Recovery in Manual and Automated modes: Disk Editor, Partition Manager, Partition Recovery, File Recovery,


You,ll need acess to a pc to make a mint linux livecd,

or an active BOOT disk


i fixed a pc 2 weeks ago,

IT came up as a blank screen,
the windows boot files were all deleted,
I just replaced em with files using safe mode ,
directory service restore option.


http://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=38