Write Sector Failure - Help

Hello... my sister's computer "stopped working" ...

Essentially the scenario is as follows:

When she would try to boot the system it would crap out during Windows boot up. I told her if she wasn't going to miss anything on her computer that she should go ahead and put in her system restore disks. While running the system restore disks the system craps out with the error:

"Write Sector Failture Result=1, Drive=128 Sectors=25690855 to 25690919"

The computer is a Toshiba Qosmio Notebook running XP.

Please and thank you deeply to anyone who can walk me through restoring this laptop.

 

Sounds like the hard drive is failing, or has already failed completely. Find out who made the hard drive (sometimes the model number is listed in the BIOS; do a Google search for that model number to find the manufacturer). Then visit the maker's web site and download and run their diagnostic tool. All the hard drive makers have these diagnostic programs, they're free and easy to use, and usually you'll create a bootable CD or floppy disk, then boot to it to run the test. That will tell you if the hard drive has truly died.


...and welcome to Major Geeks! :major

 

dlb, thanks for your assistance... i'm having trouble googling and finding out what kind of harddrive this cpu has, and its booting up to a black screen/flashing cursor (no prompt) so I cant look it up on the cpu...

its a Toshiba Qosmi G15R on the bottom label there are some numbers, not sure if they mean anything but I'll post them here in hopes that they tip off something...

PM745 512M 60 40 WLGBT TV 128M

Serial: Y4018749H

 

I did a little research and found that the laptop was sold with 100gb of hard drive space in the form of a 60gb and a 40 gb hard drive; that's what the 60 and 40 represent on the sticker on the bottom. When you first turn on the PC, you should be able to press either F2 or F1 when you see the Toshiba logo to enter the BIOS or setup. If you look around in there for a listing for IDE devices or maybe Boot Devices you might be able to get the hard drive(s) part number(s). If it starts with WD it's a Western Digital, if it's IC or HT it's a Hitachi, an ST is Seagate, MK is usually Toshiba... If you still can't find out anything, you can either remove the hard drives, or run the Hitachi diagnostic which tends to work pretty well on all brands. One interesting thing, because there's probably 2 hard drives, the chances of them both being bad is pretty slim. You can probably remove one at a time, run the diagnostic on each, and find out which one is bad, then use the good one to reload Windows. Here's a link to the Hitachi dive diagnostic program:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/IBM_-_Hitachi_Drive_Fitness_Test_d2828.html
This is an ISO image that you need to burn to a CD to create a bootable CD. If you're unsure on how to burn an ISO image, just post and I'll run thru the process for you. It's easy, no worries.
Here's the link to the user's guide for your laptop, maybe you can look thru it to find out how to access the hard drives or what key is needed to enter the BIOS or setup.
http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/...BV_EngineID=ccciadedfhgmhigcgfkceghdgngdgmn.0

 

Thanks! That got it.