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Toshiba Portege R100 - HDD Gone? Something Else? Help thx

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5.5K views 4 replies 2 participants last post by  TheOutcaste  
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#1 ·
First off, sorry if I'm posting in the wrong forum mod, please move as needed. Thanks in advance...

It all started when this new-to-me machine, which was dropped several weeks ago to seemingly no ill effect on anything but the case, froze as it seemed to be going into slleep mode. Or maybe hibernation. In any case the Teletubbies-green hills were the only thing on the screen, when I decided to power the machine off...as it had been sitting that way for several minutes, something it had never done. A few seconds later after depressing the power button, it was off. Maybe twenty minutes later, I turned the laptop back on again. But this time no Windows XP Pro SP2 startup screen, just the following error, after and while hearing the hard drive repeatedly do a short seek:
160
Invalid Boot.ini
Booting from C:\windows\

Or something very similar. At any rate, the machine would restart after a few minutes of showing this and repeat the process: BIOS boot screen, black screen, error screen.

So I have a few questions:
1. Do I have a bad 1.8" 40GB hard disk on my hands? If so, where to get a new one? An iPod? Maybe a $350 classic's 160 gig would work? Or maybe I could run GRC's SpinRite on the drive?
2. How would I access the drive to either fix the boot.ini, scan it with SpinRite or other software, reinstall Windows, etc.? I didn't get an optical or other drive with this eBay purchase and I didn't see anything in the BIOS for USB booting...does that mean on this Toshiba Portege R100 ultralight that I need to get a 1.8" to USB drive adapter or something even more exotic?
3. If I do need to reinstall Windows is there anything special I need to do if I reinstall by slaving the drive in a tower I have sitting around, assuming I can get it out of this two-and-a-half-pound rig? Or should I just disconnect both of the current HDD IDE cables and only connect the 1.8" to the mobo for less software confusion?

This little guy is my main college machine now for taking to classes and such...lovely to carry around an ultraportable with 6+ hours of battery life...and school starts the 9th of January, so help would be appreciated in relatively short order, lest I need to get another laptop (ugh) or use my 15" Dell 1505 (UGH). Thanks in advance!

P.S. Yea I'm double-posting, once at Poasters Computer Forum and once at Helponthe.net.
 
#2 ·
Right Click My Computer and click properties
Click Advanced Tab
Under Startup and Recovery click Settings button
In the System Startup section, click the Edit Button -- A notepad window should open
Paste the contents into your reply and we'll see if we can figure out what it doesn't like.
To paste, press CTRL+A to select all, CTRL+C to copy to clipboard, then CTRL+V in the replay window to paste.

If you get any errors along the way, make note of the exact error and post it here.

Jerry
 
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#3 ·
Ehm, I'd probably have the problem fixed if I could do that...it's just that the computer won't boot into Windows. At all. Hmm, would Safe Mode ossibly get around this, as I do remember being able to get the OS selection menu up...
 
#5 ·
Sorry, had this confused with a similar issue, where it would boot into windows after it gave the error.

If you have a WinXP Pro CD you can boot to the recovery console and use bootcfg /rebuild to repair the boot.ini file as well as run chkdsk /p (see first link below for info on Recovery Console commands)
If it's more than just a corrupt boot.ini and chkdsk doesn't fix it, then you may need to run fixboot and fixmbr as well, but try bootcfg and chkdsk first
Boot with the CD and choose R from the first screen to start the recovery console.
Recovery Console
Description of the Windows XP Recovery Console
Description of the SET Command in Recovery Console
How to install and use the Recovery Console in Windows XP

Did you try Safe Mode command prompt only? Sometimes works when plain Safe Mode won't. If that gets you to a C:\ prompt, you can run chkdsk /f (fix errors) or chkdsk /r (locate and recover bad sectors and fix errors). note that either of these can take a long time to finish.

You can also try to read the boot.ini file, or copy it to floppy to read on another PC
at the C:\ prompt type the following:
attrib -h -s c:\boot.ini
type c:\boot.ini
or to copy to a floppy:
copy c:\boot.ini a:\boot.ini

If the hard drive is formated FAT32 and not NTFS, a Win98 boot disk could be used to boot and then read the boot.ini file and run chkdsk
If it's ntfs, see Bootdisk.com NTFS. There is a link to NTFS4DOS there that you can use to make a boot floppy, or you can get a ready made image or bootable CD image for $4

HTH

Jerry
 
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