Help With Toshiba Laptop

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I have a toshiba laptop model#: a65-1063

i've had it for a couple of years. No problems whatsoever. Turned it on today, and it will not boot up. It freezes up on the loading Windows XP screen. Will not go any furthur.

Please Help.
 
hi, before the problem did you install any software?

also see if you can boot into safe mode - press F8 after the toshiba splash screen or whatever it is that you get, i've never used a toshiba pc :D
 
The Toshiba Satellite A65 1063, and similar models of the A60 series, seem to have a lot of early failures of the hard drive.

What you describe is typical of what happens when your hard drive has likely gone bad... Usually the drive is still good enough to recover the data plugging it in as a slave, but I would not abuse it while trying to fix it, as you still want it to turn for recovery.

A new Seagate mobile drive with a five year warranty is available for $40 to $70, depending on size... The Western Digital Scorpios, Samsung, Fujitsu, and Toshiba are similarly good. Avoid Hitachi. see at www.directron.com, www.zipzoomfly.com, www.tigerdirect.com and other sites.
 
Before buying a hard drive get ahold of a livecd like Knoppix or Kanotix or Puppy that will boot off of the cdrom. You can boot the computer without the hard drive with these live cd's. If it works then your memory is good. You can also try to read the hard drive, if you can't mount the hard drive and read it then it probably is the hard drive, but if it mounts and it spins then it probably isn't the hard drive and maybe a virus. Bad memory will cause a computer not to load windows. If the linux Operating system will not load then your memory is suspect. If you have 2 memory modules you can run one at a time to see if the computer will boot. If you are still in warranty I wouldn't open the computer but just try one of these livecd Operating systems.
Puppy Linux is the easiest to use and a small download (80mb) compared to the rest. It is freeware.
 
I strongly recommend against doing as Russ suggests if you want to preserve your chances of recovering valuable data.
The memory failure in a Toshiba Satellite would generally not cause a failure in this way (although in very rare cases, it could) but you do not want to do anything to stress the possibly failed hard drive until after you have saved or recovered valuable data. If you have nothing valuable to save, go a head.
But if the hard drive is in failure mode, every attempt to turn the platters can possibly increase the risk that the drive will freeze up and you would then recover nothing.
After you have saved valuable data, do whatever you want, of course.
Running the memory test is ok, if the drive is not connected.
Loading the Linux Operating System is not for first timers in such an event as this, and loading it will put a fragile drive at further risk.
Running one memory module at a time is an acceptable procedure, if it then causes Windows to load... but do not make demands on the computer if it does not.
 
i don't mind if all my things are gone. that's fine. i have the things i need on backup discs already, and transferred to my other laptop. anything i can do to just recover windows?
 
Don't you have a Toshiba recovery disc? That is where the Windows install is... There is no easy way to copy Windows XP from one hard drive to another... technically it is illegal, so discussion is verboten on this forum.

You can contact Toshiba, preferably by phone, and buy a new recovery disc set cheaply... about $30. They only have them until they run out. They do not make more.

If not available, get back to this forum. We have a few copies in our shop of various recovery install discs... They are usually only able to work on a very narrow range of other Toshiba laptops.
 
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