need laptop advice

MNuTz · 25 Mar 2007 at 20:19

lo all,

My mum bought herself aToshiba Satellite Pro A10 laptop a few years ago, its been having some trouble and instead of bringing it to me her husband had a go and now it wont even load up.

I have no idea what the original problem was, all i get when asked "it does nothing!".

Ive got it sitting here next to me at the moment and i powered it on, you get a flash of the Toshiba screen and then i get the following msg:

Insert system disk in drive, press any key when ready

With the laptop ive 2 Product Recovery CD-ROMS, one 'Tools and Utilities CDROM' and a valid windows XP service pack 2 disk (not sure if this is XP or just an update for service pack 2).

Ive put the recovery disk in and i can hear the CD spinning but nothing happens, i press a button and its just repeats the same msg.

never worked on laptops before, normal i just take the HDD out, format it on my PC, put it back in and reinstall OS.

Can anyone help?

MNuTz · 25 Mar 2007 at 20:33

right, managed to get into the BIOS and change the boot up sequence.

I put in the rescue disk and it came up with the following:

Starting Windows 98 (although im sure its XP).....

Microsoft RAMDrive version 3.06 virtual disk C:
Disk size: 2,048k
Sector Size: 512 bytes
Allocation unit: 2 sectors
Directory entries: 64

TOSHIBA Enhanced-IDE CD/DVD-ROM Device Driver (ATAPI) Vsn 2.24
(other info not important)

MSCDEX Version 2.25
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corp. 1986-1995. All Rights reserved.
Drive X: = Driver TOSCD001 unit 0

CDR101: Not ready reading drive X
Abort, Retry, Fail?Bad or missing XCOPY32.MOD
ERROR ! XCOPY TO RAMDRIVE FAILED !

I know its only the bottom bit that seems important but wanted to give you everything i have!

Snapshot · 26 Mar 2007 at 06:40

It sounds to me like the HDD has failed. You need to try a different bootable CD to prove this. Have a look at the XP SP2 CD to see if it is the full version and use that if it is. Otherwise use one of your own - even if it's not XP. Try installing an OS and see if it finds an HDD to install to.

2bullish · 26 Mar 2007 at 08:20

MNuTz said:
right, managed to get into the BIOS and change the boot up sequence.

I put in the rescue disk and it came up with the following:

I know its only the bottom bit that seems important but wanted to give you everything i have!

Open up the case and pull the hdd out, pull the conection ribbon out and give it a blow to remove any dust etc. Thats all you mcan really do, as Snapsh0t says its a hdd failure, if its mechanical there is nothing you can do but replace it.

MNuTz · 26 Mar 2007 at 09:32

i was thinking HDD failure or mem failure, im about to stick Knoppix on a CD and see if i can use that to have a look at the HDD.

Hmm, Knoppix runs fine and seems to create a temp file on the HDD.

But i still cant manage to get a windows install to work.