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[Help] Toshiba Satellite U300 problem

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necrokiller

Member
Joined
Apr 20, 2008
Location
Toronto, Canada
So my friend asked me to fix her laptop. She knocked it over from the kitchen counter (ouch!), but there is no noticeable breakage or any damage on the body.

Since then, the laptop won't boot into Vista. After the boot screen, I can only see/move the mouse cursor but the rest of the screen is just a black background. It won't even go to the logon screen. If I leave it like that, after some time the laptop reboots and same things happens again. It stuck in that cycle.

Same thing happens I try to boot it in Safe Mode. The BIOS has little to no options regarding the HDD. The primary concern is to backup all the important data to be safe...it cannot be lost at any cost.

Where do I start though to see where the problem lies?
 
The hard drive might have got damaged. If laptop is using sata drive you could remove it and place it in desktop then scan if there is damage. Use both short and extended scan. If drive is damaged you won't fixed without replacement. Via desktop you might be able retrieve data of laptop.

It could be also that something got corrupted and the drive is not damaged. Then you could try vista's repair utility.

I would listen for odd noises coming out of hard drive area. If there are then the drive might need to be replaced.
 
That was my initial response as well. I'll try using the repair utility. There aren't any clicking noises coming from the HDD. Im thinking of using a linux live disc to check for corruption before I take it out. Thanks for the input.
 
I think you would be better of scanning the drive first. From my experience toshiba drives fail easily.
 
I'd pull the drive and check it from another PC before you do anything else
 
what brand is the hdd? if its WD then download the WD diag tools...

they might work with other hdd brands not to sure though..
 
what brand is the hdd? if its WD then download the WD diag tools...

they might work with other hdd brands not to sure though..

Toshiba uses their own toshiba hard drives. The wd diag utility will work with any hard drive by the way.
 
well I connected it to my desktop...it got detected right away (2 partitions). A 'quick scan' through HD Tune showed no error. I'll run a thorough scan later. But now Im trying to copy the data but its stuck. Even the "read" benchmark got stuck. Im thinking it is damaged to some extent. Any way to secure the data now?

There is however some noise coming from it. Could be just the read process. Its not the 'clicking' noise. Now I got this error:

errorqiu.jpg


toshiba160gbquickscan.jpg
 
If drive is damaged you could try using power data recovery software. It isn't free but they do have a demo of it. It will scan and show you recoverable files but won't let you recover.
 
If drive is damaged you could try using power data recovery software. It isn't free but they do have a demo of it. It will scan and show you recoverable files but won't let you recover.

I have a pretty good software I bought for recovery, 'Recover Data'. I used it to recover 250gb of data off a formatted hard disk. I just remembered I had it. But even if it displays all the data available, the problem is reading off the bad sectors on the hard disk right? Would the software overcome that?
 
It would depend on which part of hard drive the file is. If it on physically damaged part of a hard drive that file won't be recoverable. As goes for everything else, software should do it.

Recovering vista is funny too.
 
I was able to recover most of the data...90%+
For the rest, the software reported that it encountered a bad sector.

This is what a thorough scan revealed:

Scanned data : 152566 MB
Damaged Blocks : 1.1 %
Elapsed Time : 91:48

1 Error at 1713 MB (LBA 3508960)
2 Error at 1893 MB (LBA 3878296)
3 Error at 2138 MB (LBA 4379704)
4 Error at 2391 MB (LBA 4897112)
5 Error at 2610 MB (LBA 5346960)
6 Error at 2625 MB (LBA 5376632)
7 Error at 3086 MB (LBA 6322128)
8 Error at 3608 MB (LBA 7389560)
9 Error at 3787 MB (LBA 7755952)
10 Error at 4023 MB (LBA 8240488)
11 Error at 4030 MB (LBA 8254416)
12 Error at 8098 MB (LBA 16585760)
13 Error at 8719 MB (LBA 17857072)
14 Error at 8730 MB (LBA 17879960)
15 Error at 9493 MB (LBA 19442552)
16 Error at 9523 MB (LBA 19505120)
17 Error at 9703 MB (LBA 19873456)
18 Error at 9754 MB (LBA 19977880)
19 Error at 9940 MB (LBA 20358096)
20 Error at 9955 MB (LBA 20387896)
21 Error at 10418 MB (LBA 21337104)
22 Error at 10598 MB (LBA 21704904)
23 Error at 10909 MB (LBA 22343120)
24 Error at 10942 MB (LBA 22409656)
25 Error at 11124 MB (LBA 22783984)
26 Error at 11175 MB (LBA 22888408)
27 Error at 11361 MB (LBA 23268496)

toshiba160gbfullscan.jpg


It would be better to replace it now, right? Should I even bother formatting and reinstalling Vista? For my friends usage, I noticed more than half of this was empty. How much would a new hard disk cost for this? Any would do or it is better to stick with Toshiba?
 
Got to toshiba website and check if the hard drive is under warranty. Usually hard drive is under 3 year warranty even though the laptop is under 1 year.

If the drive is damaged there is no point of formating nad reinstalling. The drive will always cause problem no matter how empty it is. Unless you want this person to be back in some time. Though if you manage to get hard drive replaced under warranty, destroy data on it. That recovery software that you own should have something for wiping personal data.
 
Unless she wants an excuse to get a whole new laptop you must replace the drive
 
Oh well, I would just advise to change the hard drive as well. But I don't really care what she decides to do with her money. Just wanted to lay out all the possible options. She told me the hard drive had issues before and its not under warranty anymore. Thanks all you guys for the input...wasn't a difficult problem but still its best to ask before dealing with someone elses computer.
 
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