laptop wont boot to drive or cd rom? 1

[dansb]

I know the forum says desktop, but there is not section for laptops and I saw someone else posted their laptop issue in here also...

I have a 4 year old toshiba satellite.. It keeps hanging and wont boot. I get the toshiba screen, then a screen flashes once containing alot of text but too fast to read.. then computer just hangs..

the fans are on...
the ac light is green
the power light is blue

Ive tried it with the battery in, battery out, AC only, etc.. Ive inserted the RESTORE CD ROM but the laptop wont veen boot to that drive either... Ive even went into setup and set it to boot to cd rom drice first, but still nothing.

Randomly (but not often) it makes it to a screen stating the following: "windows could not start because following file is missing or corrupt: windows/system32/config\system
you can attempt to repair by starting windows setup using original setup cd rom. select r at first screen to start repair"

however pressing R does nothng but start pc over again to hang..

Im assuming the mboard is finished, but before i throw out the laptop, i just wanted to ask around. just in case.
Thanks for any help anyone may offer.

 

[csxkidd]

If you are able to access the BIOS with no problem, then I doubt very seriously it's the motherboard.

Can you boot up in safe mode by pressing F8 upon start-up? If you are, then we can do a disk check on the hard drive or else run the file checker from the cmd prompt to verify your system files by typing in sfc /scannow. Do you also have a recovery partion on the hard drive?

I'm not trying to undermine your intelligence, but are you positive that you have the CD-ROM booting as first priority by saving the changes that you made to the boot order?

 

[BadBigBen]

It still could be the Motherboard, or better said a part of the motherboard, namely the IDE controller going out on you...

then a screen flashes once containing alot of text but too fast to read..

did you notice what color that screen was? if it is BLUE then it is a windows BSOD... which indicates that part of windows does get loaded and then it hits a hardware error (or loads a wrong driver which tries to access the hardware in a wrong way)...

csxkidd posed a question about the boot order and saving it... it is valid, as it will help in determining the problem, and now my question along the lines: the CD you used to boot from, was it a burned copy or was it an original XP cd?

the reason is that some DVD/CD drives have problems booting from burned media...

Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."

 

[dansb]

Thanks alot for your quick responses!

when the screen flashes, it is still a black screen. I keep rebooting trying to catch a glimpse of what it is saying, but can not.
and regarding the Boot order; yes I double checked to make sure it actually saved the order. it did. the CD i was using was the original Toshiba Recovery and Applications DVD.
I just now set the boot order back to CD ROM being in third position.

Yes I am able to press F8 and select SAFE MODE... however, it displays the following:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\windows\system32\hal.dll
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\windows\system32\kdcom.dll
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\windows\system32\bootvid.dll
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\windows\system32\config\system
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\windows\system32\config\system.alt

Then it hangs for about 5 minutes before finally displaying the following:

"windows could not start because following file is missing or corrupt: windows/system32/config\system
you can attempt to repair by starting windows setup using original setup cd rom. select r at first screen to start repair"

The same above text displays when i select "safe mode with command prompt"... I also tried "enable boot logging", but it hangs for a few minutes before displaying "windows could not start because ......" (same message).

I tried "debugging mode"... stil the same thing.

This is looking bad, huh? I did buy one of those external drive cases and put the laptop hard drive in the case and then hooked the ext drive via usb to another computer to get my data off of the drive. that was successful. so I have my data, but just was hoping to still have a laptop. lolol.

 

[dansb]

* I meant to say "cd rom / dvd drive"
** also, I just saw a slower flash of that text, it said something about Phoenix bios.. but there were about 11 lines of text, but all i saw was the first line said "phoenix bios" and one of the lower lines said "initialized".. lol.

 

[dansb]

*** OK, sorry for so many entries. I just pressed BREAK and it froze that flashing screen... heres what it says:

phoenix bios 4.0 release 6.0
copyright 1985-2002 phoenix technologies
all rights reserved.

btq00 bios version 1.80
cpu = intel pentoum 4 cpu 3.00 g
511 system ram passed
512 cahche ram passed
system bios shadowed
video bios shadowed
fixed disk 0 : toshiba mk8025gas
atapi cd rom : pioneer dvd-rw dvr k12d
mouse initialized

entering setup...

 

[vacunita]

I think your down to a Windows corruption problem. The fact that it won't boot form the CD/DVD may be totally unrelated.

You can try to download a boot Cd such as :

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

and try that to boot the machine. If it boots, then that signals a problem with your recovery CD.

Randomly (but not often) it makes it to a screen stating the following: "windows could not start because following file is missing or corrupt: windows/system32/config\system
you can attempt to repair by starting windows setup using original setup cd rom. select r at first screen to start repair"

however pressing R does nothng but start pc over again to hang..

This to me signals that you have indeed gotten it to boot from a CD at some point. Or you are pressing R in a totally irrelevant place.

The text you copied, is the normal start up text most bios display some form of it when they boot. Though i assume you pressed a button to get into BIOS as its entering setup there.



----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[vanka25]

This to me signals that you have indeed gotten it to boot from a CD at some point. Or you are pressing R in a totally irrelevant place.

dansb

From what I can gather you were pressing "R" when you received the message:

"windows could not start because following file is missing or corrupt: windows/system32/config/system
You can attempt to repair by starting windows setup using original setup cd rom. select r at first screen to start repair"

This is not where the message is instructing you to press the "R" key after you have successfully booted from the original Windows setup disc - not the manufacturer's recovery disc. This will then select the recovery mode of the Windows boot disc instead of the installation mode. I agree that you should try some other bootable CD to verify whether or not you are able to boot from a CD - use something like Knoppix or similar. I have come across laptops that refused to boot from CDs and was forced to create boot floppies and use a USB floppy drive.

 

[dansb]

thanks for replies. I havent pressed "R".. I just press F8, then go into the screen, select "Safe Mode", and all that above is what pops up a few minutes later... After recieving that message telling me about the "r", i did press "r" afterwards just to see if anything would happen, but nothing. all of that stuff is displayed wether I have that toshiba recovery DVD inserted or not (i just tried both scenereos now)...

i am trying to get that bootable CD that you recommended. Ive downloaded, and now just trying to get it onto a cdr. I will try that once i figure it out. lol.

 

[theo1881]

could be the hdd has an issue

if you can get an external usb caddy for the drive you may be able to do chkdsk

Laters, phat, headshape