Toshiba BSOD

I'm currently looking at a friends Toshiba L300. It's running Vista Basic and on boot it recognises a problem and wants to launch startup recovery. You can do this, it processes through and then when the desktop kicks in, it BSOD with 8086.

I've tried Safe mode and stalls on system32\ci.dll but then goes through and does the same.

I read a post and changed the SATA mode in BIOS 'compatibilty' from 'ahci' and it goes further, but then either normal mode or safe mode, desktop background comes up and then message

'startup recovery. The installed program cannot start' Press OK to shut down'

They have been told drive is duff and needs reinstalling but they have no recover media and product key on base is unreadable and been quoted £200

I'm of the thinking that it's infected but need to work out which SATA mode to continue on and what to do.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

 

If you think you have a virus then try Kaspersky boot cd.

Im inclined to agree that you need to re-install the OS though. £200 is rediculous. you can get the toshiba recovery CD for £10ish or a full copy of windows for £90.

The drive image is usually on the HD anyway. Have a read through this

 

yep think he quoted £200 for new drive and OS but seems high.

Have tried going to repair my computer but does exactly the same

 

You said you tried to "repair my computer". Do you mean the option provided in safe mode "Repair your Computer"? Have you try sending it back to a factory state as Tueur suggested by pressing the 0 button while turning on the computer? This will take the computer back to a factory state so anything done since purchase will be lost unless you back up the important data offline to an external hard drive or flash drive with something like a linux distro like Puppy.

 

yep tried that as well as I found it somewhere last night. Not sure whether I should put SATA mode back to AHCI and focus on BSOD 8086 or compatibility mode and 'The Installed Program cannot start' message

Going to check it out with Ultimate Boot cd tomorrow and see if I can find anything

 

Another option you may try that has been successful for some people is to set the Toshiba Recovery Partition to Active with a bootable partition manager and then reboot into the recovery wizard. You can try the bootable version of Partition Wizard, select the recovery partition if shown and then mark it as active. Reboot and see if you get the recover wizard.

http://www.partitionwizard.com/video-help/setactiveorinactive/setactiveorinactive.html

 

ok that sounds good. will try that as well. Just not had chance at the moment other than basic diagnostics last night. Not even Safe mode with command prompt did anything.

Thought would shout for suggestions early before I waste loads of time

 

from the things you are telling us it does sound like your disk is not well. It may be worth running a disk diagnostic first to rule that out before spending lots of time fixing something that may be un fixable. I think Toshiba use Fujitsu \Drives so you should find their diagnostic on there website although if memory serves me correct it isnt a bootable CD. It may be on UBCD though

 

yep that's what I was worried about and if the drive is naff, with no media I could be stuffed. I know someone posted about getting media for £10 but not sure if I would need the product key in which case that's all scratched as well and unlegible

Got it with me today and going to try Ultimate Boot cd in a mo

 

All the media usually does is autorun at boot and launch the recovery process which restores the drive image from the hidden partition. If you replace the drive the partition and image is lost.

If you can boot into windows, install Speccy and run that. It will tell you your Windows serial which you can erite down and keep safe. If you can then find someone with a copy of the same windows version that you have then you can use their install disk with your serial (note it has to be a windows installation disk not a product recovery disk). This is not illegal. When you buy software you buy a licence not a disk. the disk is just a means of delivering the software. so as long as you use your serial you are legal. You may be able to buy a copy of the disk off ebay.

 

Furthest I can get is running SATA mode in compatibility and then I get

"System recovery. The installed program cannot run. Press ok to shutdown"

Back in AHCI it BSOD whether doing repair, safe mode or normal.

Ran UBCD 5.11 and disk has passed tests. Can see 2 partitions. Spoken to Toshiba and they say £30 for recovery media, no product key needed and then £70 for new drive.

But maybe test is telling me drive ok?

 

Actually just tried as SATA compatibility and a repair. Takes a while but comes up with desktop background and

System Recovery Options
The installed program cannot start. Click OK to turn off the computer

 

ok playing now and with UBCD 5.11 I'm using PartedMagic and able to copy all the recovery partition to my NAS, 5Gb of it. Not sure if I can do anything with it from there to put onto a DVD or anything to use.

I have tried again through UBCD 5.11 to set the recovery partition as the active but when it boots it just comes back with 'Bootmgr not found' and have to reboot.

One of the disk tool here shows the drive as fine, but when I run a test in PartedMagic it givess read errors, but thinking maybe a diskfix might fix. Still not sure if a new disk is needed, but I might be wrong. I've tried mounting the data drive and copying that but it gives me read errors and tells me to use chkdsk but obviously I can't do that through PartedMagic as far as I'm aware. Going to get my hands on a usb and try to do a partition copy so that I get the userdata off anyway.

Would be good if I could do something with the recovery info that I'm copying off to my NAS in order to save ordering from Tosh and then just reformat this drive