Toshiba Satellite Laptop Boot

[thescullster]

Hi all

I have a Toshiba Satellite laptop which doesn't want to boot off its own HD. Just sits there with nothing on the display, no error messages nothing.

Strange thing is it will boot fine off a Linux CD, display the OS etc.

Looking in "Places" under Linux I see a drive labelled Data, but this is not accessible due to "unable to mount" messages.

Any help with diagnosis appreciated. If it was a hard drive failure I would be expecting "No boot device found" type messages when trying to boot from the device HD.

There may be stuff worth retrieving from the lappy, so I am reluctant to install Ubuntu as a test. The existing OS is Windows 7 Home Premium, but there is no media to attempt a repair install.

Thanks

Phil

[F]

Check the bios to make sure it's looking to boot from the right place.

[Brian Gaff]

Not to forget any bios battery it may have of course, though one of that low number of years still ought to be ok.

I had this with a desktop and it turned out to be a psu problem where one of the rails was very slow in rising to the correct voltage due to a dody capacitor on the motherboard.

Brian

[Lee]

Not necessarily, I had a Toshiba do exactly the same thing after a HDD failure. Can you hear it spin? Check the bios to see if the drive is reporting itself in there, if it's not it may be worth pulling it out and sticking it in a caddy in case it's a power issue.

Otherwise it's likely a failed drive, especially as Ubuntu can't find it.

[John Williamson]

Have you tried the Ultimate Boot CD, which has many non-destructive tools on it for diagnosing and curing HD problems.

It is possible the drive is mechanically dead, but the electronics hasn't realised. Maybe one of the power lines on the SATA connection is dead?

[Adrian C]

Just before "sitting there", have any windows related messages or graphics floated by? Does immediately pressing space or F8 do anything?

In BIOS (depends on how old the laptop is) there may be a setting for SATA emulation mode - choices of AHCI, RAID, IDE, Raid, WD40, etc...

If this is (accidently) set the wrong way to what was set when the OS was initally built, then you should get a tell tale blue screen on boot. However I've seen some odd machines that hang black instead.

[David.WE.Roberts]

Try Disk Utility under Linux (at least on Ubuntu) and see what it thinks about the drive.

It should be able to tell you SMART data and also what partitions are recognised.

Or not see the drive at all.

Cheers

Dave R

[thescullster]

Hi all

Thanks for feedback and various suggestions from all.

Unfortunately not much further forward!

Having burned a Slacko Puppy Linux CD, I can now see the HD through Slacko file system. Also, if I go into setup, I can see the HD details hitting F2 at start of boot. But if I try to get it to boot off the HD it shows a blinking cursor briefly then goes to a blank screen (not BSOD).

Can't find a disk utility as such under Slacko, but it can see and mount the drive. It appears as 3 partitions SDA1,2 and 3. SDA1 has 1.5 Gb is labelled WinRe - guessing this is recovery partition. SDA2 is labelled Vista - Looks like Windows, Progs etc SDA3 is labelled Data

SDA2 which appears to be the system partition looks like it is nearly full - although I am struggling to get folder size info from Slacko. Is this likely to cause the freeze up I'm seeing?

Phil

[Lee]

Sounds more like a corrupt MS boot sector (rather than physical damage), restoring the MBR and boot files may help:

Lee

[Lee]

Oh, forgot to add you should try an error-check on the drive first, otherwise you may cause further issues.

[Vir Campestris]

+1.

You might want to try a backup first.

Andy