HDD boot problem

Wife's old Toshiba P35 S605 laptop-xp Home...

I've been working with others looking for virus and malware but I also have a problem..

When booting normally goes to media test failure black screen.

When I go into bios and uncheck HDD, check cd drive and move cd into first place the computer boots up fine.

When I boot up thru cd and run auto fix file system and scan n recover bad sectors on C drive the reports come back: volume clean.

Does this not indicate my HDD is working fine?

If so, then why will it not boot directly to it rather than go thru the cd drive?

Nothing in cd drive btw...

 

Not always. That old of a machine, the IDE chip set could be toast. You could try another drive, see if that one works. Does it even show up in the bios?

 

Update:

Discovered and removed trojan Hupigon6.ZP with help in malware section..

Unit is currently finishing install of SP3 and then will update.

Unit still will not boot from HDD and I have to leave it booting thru cd drive..

 

UPDATE.... unit is updating on its own from Microsoft website and 'appears' to be working well...

However, it still will not boot up from the HDD and I must leave the Cdrom drive check and in first place and the HDD in second place and uncheck... wierd...

 

I realise I'm two days later but there are two other options you need to look for one is boot other device which should be disabled if booting from a hard drive, the second is hard drive boot priority which should be set to your boot drive.

At the bios screen you can also hit F11/F12 to enter boot options and manually select the exact OS you wish to boot, this is helpful if you have one or more full or broken OS's or on the same drive and stops them being loaded.

If the computer will only boot with a bootable disk inserted the boot sector will need repairing.

 

hey not sure if mine is same problem but i just fully restored my toshiba laptop but it still wont boot unless i disconnect my seagate external hard drive it has a usb 3 cable all other hard drives are only usb 2 and it will boot up with them connected no problems so everytime it restarts i have to unplug the usb 3 cable till the screen says start windows with logo then i plug it back in and its fine

 

bdelapp can you give the exact "media test failure" message that it appears. Does it give any other information, numbers etc?

EDIT: Does the black screen give a message such as the one Below?:

Intel UND I, PXE-2.0 (build 082)
Copyright (c) 1997-2000 Intel Corporation
For Realtek RTL8139 (x)/8130/810X PCI Fast Ethernet
PXE-E61: Media Test Failure, Check Cable
PXE-M0F: Exiting PXE ROM

 

Sounds like your external device somehow got moved higher in the boot order than your system disk. Open up BIOS and make sure that the first item in the list is the disk drive upon which you installed Windows.

 

Welcome Kezz, you need to start your own help thread with a description of your specific problem.

 

hey JonnyBB878 no nothing shows up it only black screen with solid white cursor line and just won't go past that i then unplug the usb3 cable push power button then it restarts fine then i plug the usb3 cable back in when the screen says starting windows then no problems at all i think someone told me it is trying to read my external drive as a boot disc but in bios the only drive there is the laptops

 

Your laptop's drive is the only one that shows up in BIOS list when the external drive is not plugged into your computer, and that's what one would expect. How could the computer identify a drive that it's not hooked up to? However, you should check the BIOS list when you boot with the external drive plugged into you computer. If it shows up as the first device in the list, then that's why you're not able to boot Windows with the external drive attached to the computer. That IS your current problem, no? I don't know, I think several of these "unable to boot" threads are getting sloshed together in my head.

 

Even with seagate 4tb plugged in it does not show up in boot bios I tried moving order around and restarting but still did the same got to black screen with solid cursor line and that's as far as it get also the light on seagate 4tb is flashing so laptop must trying to read off it im starting to go crazy the laptop man computer fixers reckons some computers just cant handle usb3 when the laptop only has usb2 ports he reckons I'll just have to put up with it I had vuze running while I was out for like 6 hours when I come home screen was black with solid cursor so it must have shut down but then couldn't restart because of hdd

 

OK, check your disk for sector errors.

Click Start Menu
Click "Run"
Type the following into Run box:

chkdsk /r

Click [Enter]
The program checks your hard drive for errors and attempts to correct any errors that it finds.
It may take several hours on a large drive, so be patient.

 

Sorry, just got confused as to who the OP is. It won't happen again.