Topic: Laptop Booting problem

[tarkin]

Hi

I have a Toshiba Portege S100 Centrino P-m 740 1.73 Ghz / 512mb 60gb Dvd/cd-rw Wlan 14.1-tft Xga Wxp Pro Uk

A couple of days ago, while XP was just loaded, I switched off (hard reset) the laptop by mistake. I somehow must have done something wrong as I cannot get back to a normal XP session.

I am faced with this constant loop:

Laptop starts>boot sequence>Win XP logo appears>Blue Screen of Death>Laptop re-starts>...and so on.

The Blue Screen appears very briefly so I do not get sufficient time to read the message.

This happens in every configuration I try (safe mode, last known good configuration, etc.)

As usual with these sorts of things, I did not back-up my data and I am desperate to preserve the data on the hard disk!

Any help would be most appreciated

Thanks

 

[Simon]

Can you get into Safe Mode, by pressing F8 (or possibly F2) during the boot sequence?  You may be able to use the Last Known Good Configuration facility, assuming it's the same on a laptop as a desktop.

[tarkin]

This happens in every configuration I try (safe mode, last known good configuration, etc.)

[Simon]

I am sure someone more familiar then me with laptops will be along soon to help you.

[Sandra]

The first thing to try is booting off a 98 boot disk change the directory to C:and run CHKDSK.

Hopefully that will sort it.

If not go into the BIOS and set it boot from the CD drive and load the XP CD.

Use the Repair console and at the DOS prompt try FIXMBR.

If that doesnt work try the same thing again but with FIXBOOT.

[chris_clark]

right then first post forced to do this by sandra  .

we have that problem with our laptops all the time at work.
useuall stick xp disk in, boot from disk, then go into the repair consol then run chkdsk /r and that useually sorts it and boots stright up afterwards.

useually 2 laptops a  week do this at work and that sorts it everytime.

POWER OF CHKDSK

[tarkin]

Thanks guys

But I can't get XP Recovery Console to start

> When I boot using Windows XP CD, I get a message stating that my hard drive is not detected and the machine will reboot.

[chris_clark]

oh noo. is it a  sata hdd in you laptop amguessing its not but never know.

might need the raid drivers installing were u boot from cd then during the loading of that u press f2 and it will promt you to put a  floppy disk in with the drivers on pick the ones u want to use then useually it will detect the hdd then.
otherwise u have some problems.

[Sandra]

Can you get into the bios and see if the hard drive is detected in there ?

[tarkin]

Sandra

Yes, the hard drive is detected by the BIOS.

By the way, I do have a Win 98 disc, can I make use of it?

[Sandra]

Well as I said in my first post you can run chkdsk off that.

It may detect the hard drive in DOS easier than from the windows recovery console.

I am not up on the other commands that may help in DOS and you may have problems with XP probably being on an NTFS partition and not a FAT 32 one.

There is a bootable floppy that will read and write to NTFS partitions available on www.bootdisk.com

Try with the floppy you have and see if it will detect your C drive at all and then we can take it from there.

[chris_clark]

one of these tricky problems this last time i encounterd it it was that the raid drivers needed installing for the sata ports on the mobo so it would pick the hdd up but was a hell ofalot of fuss my mate just gave me money to build hima  new pc lol.

[Sandra]

Are they doing SATA drives in laptops yet ?

[tarkin]

For the record and to bring the issue to a close...

I eventually took out the hard disk from the laptop. I managed to connect it to my desktop PC. I retrieved ALL my files (XP did not detect them, I had to use a powerful program from Ontrack - www.ontrack.com).

Let's look on the bright side:

1. I retrieved all my data without fault and intact
2. I learned a lot in the last couple of days
3. I have now a much faster working laptop following a re-format and removal of old junk!

Thanks for all your help

[Sandra]

Thanks for letting us know the outcome.

I am pleased that you recovered your data ok but am puzzled as to why XP didnt see the files on the drive ?

Was the pc that you used not running XP pro, as XP home cant see info on dynamic drives, which your laptop may have had.