toshiba laptop wont boot!

Help!!
My laptop wont boot anymore. When i turn on my laptop i see the biosscreen and then i get a black screen (windows wont startup). Ive tried several things like accessing advanced bootmenu but i can not access that also.

The strangest thing is that i took out the HDD from the toshiba and inserted into another laptop and voila it works perfectly! So it is not windows or the HDD that has the a problem. Next thing i tried was putting the other HDD from the other laptop in the Toshiba and that also is working perfectly. (the only thing is that it keeps on asking to restore the recoverypoint, but i asume that has something to do with the difference in the hardware), so i can see more on the screen with this HDD then the original HDD.

Ive also tried to re-arrange the boot sequence to force the laptop to boot from the cd-romplayer with the windows cd in it. But that also wont work

ive tried to access bios and reset the default settings and reboot but that wont work( after bios run i get a black screen and no visible action of the hdd) the day before i had shut down the laptop the right way so ive noticed no problems with my hdd. Ive tried all buttons to get to into the ' safe mode' but that doesnt work. can someone help me?


Addy
The netherlands

 

Is the screen completely blank after BIOS screen or is there a cursor?

You've tried just about every combination.

In the laptop that doesn't work try booting from the Windows CD with no HDD connected. Does it boot from CD?

******

Also double check you have no USB devices attached and no memory cards in any slots.

 

Hi,
Thanks for the quick reply, i will have to try the other options that you have given me.

2 questions:

If i get a complete blank screen(black) after bios run, what does that mean

If i get a blinking "-" cursor after bios run, what does that mean?

Thanks ill try the other options today!

Addy

 

Hi,

I'm trying to figure out if you are getting all the way through POST(BIOS). And thus if it is hanging at trying to start Windows or if it is a hardware problem that is not letting it complete POST.

I'm not sure if completely blank screen versus blinking cursor will tell us much but it might help find a similar situation with your model notebook if we have to search the net.


Your situation is strange in that the notebook boots from the other HDD but doesn't boot from the CD. And that the HDD works in another laptop. Very confusing because no single component seems bad.

I think trying two things might shed some light.

1) try booting the laptop with no HDD and a bootable CD (such as your Windows CD) [This might tell us if the HDD is causing a problem with the laptop getting through POST]

similarly

2) if the CD still doesn't boot then try removing the DVDROM from the laptop and see if it boots. [This should tell us if the DVDROM is causing the laptop not to complete POST] I believe there is just one screw on the bottom of the laptop holding the DVDROM in and when removed the DVDROM should just slide out.

One question, you said "Ive tried all buttons to get to into the ' safe mode' but that doesnt work." Does this mean you can get to a list of safe mode options and no option works or does it mean that no combination of buttons will get you to the list of safe mode options? I'm reading it as you can't get a list of options.

 

Hi ive tried the following steps":

1: i removed the HDD and put the windows 7 cd into the drive. voila! laptop boots accordingly.
2: i put the HDD back into the laptop and tried booting again from the CD and again a blank/black screen. But when i put the HDD into another laptop windows does work and all systems startup normally. so the HDD is not broken.

 

it is a very strange problem. I just wanted to be sure, did you change the booting order from the BIOS when you tried to boot from with the windows 7 CD/DVD when the broken HDD is on ?

 

hello, quick reply.

Let me tell you it again:

1. i removed hdd and booted from cd-> no problems since bios only recognized dvddrive.
2. i installed hdd and set bios to boot from dvddrive. so #1 dvd #hdd in bios. ->
it didn't boot. just a black screen and no action further. Even accessing safe mode by F8 or any other key did not work.
3. when i install the hdd into another laptop it works fine so hdd work perfect.
4. when i install a hdd with win Vista from the other laptop and try to boot the toshiba laptop ask to recover from a certainpoint.

my worry is that my motherboard is broken?

 

One question, you said "Ive tried all buttons to get to into the ' safe mode' but that doesnt work." Does this mean you can get to a list of safe mode options and no option works or does it mean that no combination of buttons will get you to the list of safe mode options? I'm reading it as you can't get a list of options.

I cant access safe mode in one way or another way. No button or combinations works...

 

if the motherboard is broken than it wouldnt boot with another hdd i think. If there are not much important things to lose in that HDD which doesnt work with your laptop you might plug it to another laptop again and format it there and try to put it back.

 

Try with the bad hdd installed and the Win7 CD in the tray. Hit F12 when booting up to get a boot menu. Try choosing CD as the item to boot from. [I know you have the boot order set to boot from CD but F12 will force it to try the CD as the only choice]

 

All thanks i re installed win 7 on the failing hdd on the other laptop and installed back into the Toshiba and VOILA it work fine again.

Thank you