Solved, somehow. Was: Laptop boot troubles: boots to cursor from HD...

[Sophia]

I have a Toshiba Satellite A55 laptop running Windows XP Home that won’t boot.

When I received the laptop it would boot to the choose-your-flavor-of-safe-mode screen (normal, safe mode, last known good configuration, etc.) Selecting any of the options would just reboot the computer to the same screen.

With the help of Hiren’s BootCD I copied the important data off the hard drive and later used the Toshiba restore cd to re-image the drive to factory-fresh.

When I try to boot from the hard drive, it shows the Toshiba screen then just a blinking cursor on a black screen. There are no beep codes or error messages. The hard drive light stays lit. I am able to access the bios via ESC+F1 or F12. It will not launch safe mode via F8.

When I boot from Hiren’s BootCD instead and choose the “boot from the hard drive” option it loads Windows XP perfectly (the installation on the hard drive, not the “mini xp” via ramdrive) and (at least at a cursory glance) works just as one would expect.

For what it’s worth, I have also tried changing the order of the boot devices in the bios and resetting the bios to default settings. I have removed and reseated the hard drive (but do not have a spare I could test with). Chkdsk /f is not showing any issues and an admittedly brief (couple of passes) run of memtest86+ showed no errors either. There is nothing of note in the event viewer.

Any ideas? :\

 

[janas19]

Sounds like you aren't the original owner?

Have you checked to see if the hard drive is the original stock model? It's possible it was replaced/refurbished, in which case the restore CD would load a different driver.

 

[Sophia]

janas19,

It's a friend's laptop. The hard drive is Toshiba MK4026GAX, which I presume is the original. Thanks for the quick reply!

Sounds like you aren't the original owner?

Have you checked to see if the hard drive is the original stock model? It's possible it was replaced/refurbished, in which case the restore CD would load a different driver.

 

[janas19]

janas19,

It's a friend's laptop. The hard drive is Toshiba MK4026GAX, which I presume is the original. Thanks for the quick reply!

If I were you, I would try an OEM version of Windows XP home. I don't trust restore discs, FWIW. You're CD drive is working fine, if you can boot to Windows installer, it will tell you if it reads the hard drive or not. Plain and simple.

As of now, you can't even tell if the hard drive is working, not to mention the recovery image.

 

[Sophia]

I have no fondness for restore cds either, but, alas, I only have a retail XP home cd and not an OEM one. I had wanted to do a repair install, but mixing retail and OEM versions seemed...unwise.

Anyway, if I boot of the retail xp home cd--without actually installing anything--it says I could... Install on "C:\ Partition1 ... 38154mb" or repair "c:\windows" or log into the recovery console of "1: c:\windows". Is that enough info?

If I boot using the Hiren's BootCD option "Boot From Hard Drive" it runs Windows (Toshiba bloatware and all). I'm just not sure what that's doing/skipping that makes it work where booting straight from the hard drive doesn't.

If I were you, I would try an OEM version of Windows XP home. I don't trust restore discs, FWIW. You're CD drive is working fine, if you can boot to Windows installer, it will tell you if it reads the hard drive or not. Plain and simple.

As of now, you can't even tell if the hard drive is working, not to mention the recovery image.

 

[janas19]

Hmm. I did some Googling and one thing I found was, the issue may be that the partition on the hard drive that has the OS and bootloader on it may be corrupted. Sounds like the Hirem's CD either has a way to view that particular partition, or it is loading it's own boot programs from the CD. Is it possible that the CD you have has a diagnostic tool to view the hard drive and check for any bad sectors? Or can it restore the hard drive somehow? I'm not sure exactly how it interfaces with the hard drive. Do you see evidence of the original drive's files, like personal documents and such? Or are there only system files?

 

[Sophia]

After more mucking around with the stuff on the BootCD, I've managed to get the laptop booting again via some combination of deleting the partition, a fixmbr or two, and and re-running the Toshiba restore cd.

 

[Charlie98]

I've been having the same problem with my old desktop (Dell 5150) since I've added another 80GB storage drive. Sometimes it boots to XP, sometimes it don't...

 

[janas19]

After more mucking around with the stuff on the BootCD, I've managed to get the laptop booting again via some combination of deleting the partition, a fixmbr or two, and and re-running the Toshiba restore cd.

Nice :thumbup: