[hardvinyljunkie]

Hi Guys
My daughters laptop wont boot to windows. From what she tells me it showed a BSOD prior to giving up.

The laptop is a toshiba satalite L300 - 16L system unit.
Running XP.
I believe it has upgraded hardware, in Bios it shows CPU Intel Pentium Dual T2390 @ 1.86GHz.
Hard Disk Drive TOSHIBA MK1252GSX (S1) 120gb.
Pioneer DVD Writer.
Total Memory 2048mb
System Bios Version 1.50

As it stands now when turned on it instantly shows a cursor top left in a black screen for a split second, then shows toshiba sign with f2 f8 options for bios & boot sequence, if you dont choose any option within another second it goes to a black screen with the cursor top left flashing. No fucnctions work after this, just beeps when you press a key.

I did notice that the fan didn't start when turned on at first but after a blow out with a can of air it works when it gets warm, not sure if this was different from before but it did clean out some dust.
I always had a moan at her for not using a table or a tray to give the fan some ventilation, but hey teenage girls know best huh.

I have tried removing HD and reseating, also removed ram and reseated in both slots and both ram show as 1024mb in bios in both slots individually.

I ran a Drive fitness test using an image on a cd http://www.hitachigs...port/downloads/ in both quick and advanced test it showed no errors with the hard drive.

I then tried to repair the xp installation using my xp disc, it recognised a previous installation however after it did the repair setup it reboots and goes back to the xp installation / recovery blue screen.
If i try to repair again it recognises a previous attemt and says do you want to try again, tried once but it takes you round it circles.
If I go back to boot from HD it still gives black screen with cursor.

Hope you can help.

Martin

[Alzeimer]

If you can work with your daughter laptop (enter BIOS, use your repair XP cd option then your laptop is not completely dead) it sounds to me like it is the boot sector that is damage or corrupt.

You said you tried removing and resetting the ram but did you do a test with MEMTEST86 so to test each modules individually and to rule out bad ram. Note if you do the test please make sure to let it go to the end (may take a long time).

http://www.memtest86.com/download.html

If you do not have any personal data you wanna save on the Hard Drive one thing you can try is to use DBAN (Darik's Boot and Nuke) and completely erase everything on the hard drive (it will overwrite the drive with 0 so erasing any left over data that normal formating sometimes leave behind) including the boot sector and then do a Fresh Install of XP.

http://www.dban.org/download

If you have data on the drive you would like to save then you can connect as a slave the Hard drive to another computer and save the data if possible. if you cannot access the drive you can try a program like TESTDISK which is free and a good program to recover data from hard drive that are labeled not formated (raw).

http://www.cgsecurit...stDisk_Download

Hope that will help.

[hardvinyljunkie]

Hi Alzeimer

Thanks for reply.


I will try Memtest now.

Yes she has some recent stuff she has not backed up that I need to try to save.
Can I fit a laptop HD into a Tower? or will i need to get a carriage for usb?

Thanks

Martin

[hardvinyljunkie]

Memtest results were fine, ran it over night with no errors.
I have just ordered a 2.5" SATA to USB external case.
I will try to transfer her files when I receive it in a couple of days.

I will keep you posted.

Thanks
Martin

[hardvinyljunkie]

Hi Again!

Ok so I received my external case and to my daughters delight I am able to save her files.
Now before I go ahead with DBAN (Darik's Boot and Nuke) as you suggested, I have a few questions?

Is there anything else I should back up off the drive like drivers?

Do I run DBAN with a CD with the hard drive back in the original machine?

Can you suggest anything else I should do before formatting to make re-installing easier?

Thanks
Martin

[Alzeimer]

Unless I am wrong I do not think you can backup your drivers since you cannot enter your installation, There are programs to do as you say but you are suppose to do that when you can boot windows.

Since it is a Toshiba laptop you may already have a cd for drivers that you got when you bought Laptop. If you got no cd with the laptop you either have a recovery partition (that will be erase by DBAN unless you specify otherwise by you.

[Amlak]

Hold on. If he has an XP CD, he doesn't need to resort to formatting just yet.

To the OP, do you have an XP CD with you?

EDIT: Silly me. You have the CD. Use the Recovery Console. And type in the following commands (one at a time):

fixboot

fixmbr

chkdsk /r (this one takes a while)

[hardvinyljunkie]

Amlak that worked great!

Thanks for everything both of you guys, once again the fine folk of G2G got me out of the sticky stuff!

Have a gr8 Xmas all.

Martin