[Jamesmore]

I shipped my laptop to the US in a container ship with the rest of my house when I moved back to the US.

6 months later when the ship arrived, I powered it up after the normal bios I was greeted with just a simple flashing under score "_" in the top left hand side.

I pulled out my BartPE cd and powered up the system. I was able to find that the C: drive (36gig) was still ok.

I ran a check disk and found some bad blocks, repaired and rebooted still no go

I went in and ran checkdisk again. Half way in the laptop runs out of power (DAM international converters)

Go back in to BartPE and the NTFS disk is now seen as a raw disk, I run TEST Disk and fix it and convert it back to NTFS.

I then do a DriveImage XML and backup the data as well as a simple copy of the "documents and settings" on to a backup drive.


I run check disk again and still bad block, I give in and do a format and then check disk and all bad blocks are gone :-)


I then reboot and insert a Windows XP CD and create a new partition and windows copies the files in and asks to reboot


On Reboot I am faced with the flashing Cursor again :-(

I put the XP cd back in and do it again (same problem)

I boot in to BartPE and run check disk all ok

I run test disk and check and rewrite the MBR


Reboot but still no luck :-(

Any ideas just trying to work out if its the Disk or the controller in the Laptop

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Any ideas just trying to work out if its the Disk or the controller in the Laptop

You appear to know your way around maintaining your computer, so the only possible solution is to try another hard drive to isolate the fault.

But I guess before that, you could try to run the manufactures hard disk utilities. Possibly zero the drive first before formatting... again using the manufacture hard drive formatting software.

[makai]

Any ideas just trying to work out if its the Disk or the controller in the Laptop

You appear to know your way around maintaining your computer, so the only possible solution is to try another hard drive to isolate the fault.

But I guess before that, you could try to run the manufactures hard disk utilities. Possibly zero the drive first before formatting... again using the manufacture hard drive formatting software.

[Jamesmore]

makai thanks for your ideas, I was thinking just the same, that I will try and zero the disk but I am also under the impression that the disk is bad.

[makai]

Yah, but at least an attempt will have been made. Good luck!

[Jamesmore]

Left it all night on the blinking screen and came back this morning to find a windows install screen up. Not sure what would cause such a long bootup time as HDD is first boot (when I am not booting BartPE)

[makai]

Left it all night on the blinking screen and came back this morning to find a windows install screen up

Strange. Not sure what this means. After zeroing, did you format and then put a Windows Cd into the drive?

[Broni]

I'd try couple of things.
Open HD bay. Remove HD, put it back.

Run hard drive diagnostics: http://www.tacktech....ay.cfm?ttid=287
Make sure, you select tool, which is appropriate for the brand of your hard drive.
Depending on the program, it'll create bootable floppy, or bootable CD.
If downloaded file is of .iso type, use ImgBurn: http://www.imgburn.com/ to burn .iso file to a CD (select "Write image file to disc" option), and make the CD bootable.

NOTE. If your hard drive is made by Toshiba, unfortunately, you're out of luck, because Toshiba doesn't provide any diagnostic tool.

[Jamesmore]

I tried to create a USB bootable dos disk as I don't have a floppy. The Fujitsu disk software requires a dos enviroment.

What's the best method to create a dos environment for this file to be run. Can I boot in to BartPE and some how access the file from there ?

[makai]

Try THIS page. See if it works.

[Jamesmore]

At last booted the system on CD laptop does not appear to support USB, Fujitsu passes on quick scan but fails on full scan with error code B101T4 (very helpfull) my guess is it is reporting a bad block of some kind.

Not sure apart from filling disks with 0 zeros might fix but it sounds like it might be on its way out.

[n3ko]

Interesting thread on another site from someone who called Fujitsu to ask what the codes mean.

Quick glance:

- A = quick test -or- B = comprehensive test
- 1 = failed -or- 0 = passed
- 01 - of this, the 0 seems to be "unrecoverable" and the 1 seems to be a "read error"
(i couldn't get any additional info from them)
- the last 2 characters she told me were not important because they were specific to the HD itself.

Does look like a new HD is needed.

[Broni]

Nice find