Death of laptop, buying a new one

[Brent]

I'm at a loss as to what to do here. Nothing works. When I start up Windows never loads and it's just a black screen that sits there. Safe Mode doesn't start it up and it mentions a possible CD-ROM or Hard Drive failure. I can't do System Restore because it never comes up with a past date. I had been having some minor problems the past few weeks with it not recognizing the power supply and also lots of space and memory issues, but this is the first time this has happened. Any ideas? If the hard drive is failing is there anything I can do short of buying a new one? Would a total system recovery that wipes out everything solve the problem? The computer is over 2 years old and this is the first real crippling problems I've had.

[Nimbus]

Well if you have a hard drive failure you should run some diagnostics. Does the machine you are using to access the web write to CD? If so you can create a bootable CD with some utilities and check/fix the hard drive. Was your machine formatted NTFS or Fat?

[coriolis]

Brent I'm no expert, but this probably is not something that a system restore would fix - it doesn't sound like a windows problem. It could be either hardware or the BIOS. The first thing to check is whether the case is full of dust and the fans are working. An overheating processor creates all kinds of random errors - althought that wouldn't show up until after the computer is already running.

Were you working inside the case? Did you install any hardware? Then check that all the wiring connections are correct and tight. I know that loose memory sticks will prevent a computer from starting.

Do you hear the hard drive spinning up at startup? Do the lights on the CD drive and the front of the case come on normally? Do you see anything on the monitor? Does it display the startup diagnostics - memory test and all that? At what point does it go flaky?

[x-y-no]

First thing I would do is try and get into setup (usually <del> or <F2> ) and check that the hard disk and peripherals are recognized. If it looks totally messed up, try resetting to defaults because most devices are auto-detect nowadays.

You also want to look for simple stuff like making sure it isn't your monitor that has died. If you have another machine around, try swapping monitors.

Unfortunately, this kind of thing is very much trial and error - good luck tracking it down.

[Brent]

No I have not worked inside the case, and maybe I should look in there, but now I have a bigger problem. The System Recovery last night just made the problem worse. It never finished, I had two discs from Toshiba that came with the computer and when it was time for the 2nd, it failed immediately and now when it boots up it says "bootmgr missing, ctrl-alt-del to restart" and you can't do anything else. I can't even get to BIOS now or anything else for that matter. I guess I'm going to have to take it to a repair shop. I'm also thinking it's something with the computer(as I mentioned, have had some random problems lately)

OK: A Google search says the missing bootmgr is easily fixable with a Vista CD, but I don't think I have one of those. The only CD's I remember were the two from Toshiba.

[southerngale]

Brent, is this your laptop?

[Brent]

Yes it is, Toshiba A135-4407. I tried to wipe the hard drive completely clean(which failed after a few minutes) and now I get a lovely message saying "error loading operating system". Just great. For a few minutes I got a repeated and continuous message about a PXE-ROM failure but it never went beyond that.

[Nimbus]

When you first turn the machine on just keep hitting the f2 key every half second.

This should bring you to the bios screen where you can check your configuration.

You will need to change the boot device here to CD if you wish to bypass the hard drive and boot from CD.

[Derek Ortt]

I'm at a loss as to what to do here. Nothing works. When I start up Windows never loads and it's just a black screen that sits there. Safe Mode doesn't start it up and it mentions a possible CD-ROM or Hard Drive failure. I can't do System Restore because it never comes up with a past date. I had been having some minor problems the past few weeks with it not recognizing the power supply and also lots of space and memory issues, but this is the first time this has happened. Any ideas? If the hard drive is failing is there anything I can do short of buying a new one? Would a total system recovery that wipes out everything solve the problem? The computer is over 2 years old and this is the first real crippling problems I've had.

that means you need to head to the local computer store and get a new laptop, as I had to do last month. System restore, even using the CDs may not work

[Derek Ortt]

Yes it is, Toshiba A135-4407. I tried to wipe the hard drive completely clean(which failed after a few minutes) and now I get a lovely message saying "error loading operating system". Just great. For a few minutes I got a repeated and continuous message about a PXE-ROM failure but it never went beyond that.

congrats for entering the laptop world of Derek Ortt

the exact same thing happened to me with a Toshiba last month. I now have HP (cheapest at COMPUSA)

If you have OUTSTANDING credit, I'd just go to compusa and get a new laptop, opening up a CUSA credit card

[abajan]

Well, I don't know about laptops but a few months ago my (Windows XP) desktop was refusing to start up. A friend who fixes computers for a living tried all sorts of things until he remembered a similar problem he had with another computer years ago. The solution was to simply disconnect the CD-ROM drive.

Worth a try, I guess.

[Brent]

Well, I don't know about laptops but a few months ago my (Windows XP) desktop was refusing to start up. A friend who fixes computers for a living tried all sorts of things until he remembered a similar problem he had with another computer years ago. The solution was to simply disconnect the CD-ROM drive.

Worth a try, I guess.

OK, hmmmm, I'll try that later. Nothing but a brick wall today. I found a repair shop that I'm going to stop by tomorrow and just see what they say but I'm also starting to look at some cheap laptops online I can buy. I don't have any credit yet unfortunately(though, this would be a good time to start), I'm also low on cash so I've got some thinking to do if I can't get it repaired.

[Nimbus]

If you are going to format and reinstall any OS you are going to need to get your CD working.

Rebooting the machine twice the first time after unplugging the CD and the second time for the machine to recognize the CD again after reconnecting it sometimes helps.

If the machine is freezing while trying to read the hard drive you still may need to use the F2 key to enter setup and change the boot order to read the CD before the hard drive.

Once the CD can be read the system will reformat the hard drive and reload windows onto the hard drive.

Hardware controller failures are less common than sector failures or aborted installation bugaboos. It is worth the time to see if you can get your CD reading again using f2 immediately after turning the power on to enter setup mode.

[Brent]

But that's just it... the CD works fine, but the process of trying to reformat gets an error in the middle of it and stops after a few minutes.

I think I'm about done messing with it. I contacted Gurus2Go and they may be out as early as tomorrow, so hopefully this whole thing will be solved soon.

[Brent]

Well the repair guy has come and gone and was full of bad news. I'm not totally surprised, but he suspects it's the motherboard and noticed the messed up keyboard, and thinks it'd be almost the cost of a new one to repair this one. Haven't made a decision yet(he's going to call back with an estimate), but I think it's time to move on, start looking for a new one, and maybe try to sell some of the parts on the old one.

Blah.

[Brent]

I found an HP one at Wal-Mart today for $600 with a 250 GB hard drive and 4 GB of memory. Looks good to me. Was really surprised they had one that good(was expecting a bunch of bad ones given their history). Probably going to get it tomorrow so I don't have to wait all weekend for an online shipment.

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product. ... d=10910096

[tropicana]

looks good brent, it got a few pretty good reviews.
let us know.

-justin-

[Ed Mahmoud]

I killed a laptop by spilling chicken bullion on it.

The Best Buy new laptop insurance program replaced it with a $500 deductible.

[tropicana]

ouch! now that would hurt though.

[Brent]

It's actually on the list of "Top 5 best inexpensive laptops", wow.

"HP 15.6" G60-235WM Laptop
Being last on the list does not make this laptop any less amazing. At the price of $598 (walmart.com) this laptop includes an amazing 2.10 GHZ Dual Core processor, 4GB RAM, and a 250GB hard drive. Wow! Also included is a 15.6" HD BrightView display, double layer DVD drive with LightScribe, Windows Vista, NVIDIA GeForce 8200M graphics, webcam, microphone, 5-in-1 integrated Digital Media Reader, HDMI, VGA, and a 6 cell battery."

http://www.associatedcontent.com/articl ... epage=true

Just sold me even more.