O/S will not load

brutus99

Hi guys. I have a toshiba satellete c660 laptop. When i turn it on i get a curser flash in the top corner twice and then nothing. Windows will not load. I have tried to get to the recovery screen but none of the keys will work apart from F2 but that just gets me into the memory test screen. (have checked the memory. test says it is ok). I have also booted ubuntu from a cd just to check it was not the screen. Ubuntu works fine. I am at a loss as to what to do next. can anybody help. Cheers.

solomafioso

If you were running ubuntu, could you access your own C drive? Sounds like it's borked...maybe!

What OS is your laptop? Do you have a rescue CD?

Trinity Rescue CD might help.

uch

When you press f2 can yo see your hard drive listed ?

Shiraz 4.99

Try bashing F1 or Esc to see it it will enter BIOS.

It sounds to me that the ram is unseated, turn the laptop over & take out the battery.
Unscrew the L-shaped piece of plastic on the base to reveal the HD, Ram & CMOS battery.
Check that the ram is clicked in & the HD is slid up onto it's connections & secured

brutus99

To solomafioso: the laptop is running windows 7 when i use the ubuntu cd i can see the hard drive but cant do anything with it and i do not have a rescue cd but will try the trinity rescue cd. thanks

to uch: only says which os would you like to load. in my case windows 7. there is also an option to do a memory test.

to shiraz 4.99 there are 2 x 4G ram sticks i have tried each one by itself in each slot and both of them together in both slots makes no difference. also cleaned contacts on ram and hdd before replacing. I can get the laptop up and running using an ubuntu boot cd so i dont think it is lose hardware

i will post result after i try the rescue cd. Thanks for the help much appreciated

brutus99

hi guys when i boot up from the ubuntu cd i was able to get a look at the hdd. there was an option to check the filesystem on the hard drive it just came back with the message "file system is not clean" but no option to repair it.

STEINBERG

what OS or file system was on the HD to start with? Was it windows or was it Linux? If it was linux you will find it impossible to install windows over it,, you need to wipe the drive clean first......

Filling the disk with all zeros (This may take a while, as it is making every bit of data 0) :

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1M

If you are wiping your hard drive for security, you should populate it with random data rather than zeros (This is going to take even longer than the first example.) :

dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda bs=1M

Reinstall Windows!!

bonzodog2

What Windows version is it?
If its Win7, ISOs are freely available to download from digitalriver, I would try the repair options available with that

If you want to do STEINBERG's suggestion, you only need to overwrite the partition table, very quick:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1
(could be hda)

but unless you want to completely re-install, don't

brutus99

It is a windows 7 laptop but the only way to get it to boot up was to use the ubuntu boot cd. I would rather not wipe the drive so i will try the windows ISO cheers guys

PropJoe10

brutus99 wrote: »

It is a windows 7 laptop but the only way to get it to boot up was to use the ubuntu boot cd. I would rather not wipe the drive so i will try the windows ISO cheers guys

You can use the Ubuntu boot CD to retrieve your files before you reinstall Windows if you wish to do that, otherwise everything will be lost when you reinstall.

STEINBERG

You wont be able to install windows fresh over linux as windows wont recognize the drive partitions,,, try bonzodog2's suggestion..

degsie

I'd suggest booting from 'Hiren's Boot CD' and running 'chkdsk /r' command.

brutus99

chldsk /r will check the hard drive for errors but i think it is the mbr in the windows partition that has got corrupted. chkdsk will not be able to repair that will it?

pah

STEINBERG wrote: »

You wont be able to install windows fresh over linux as windows wont recognize the drive partitions,,, try bonzodog2's suggestion..

but he doesn't have Linux installed it's windows.

op you said f2 gives you a choice of what to load with Windows 7 being the only available choice, am I reading that correctly? is it at this point you get the cursor and nothing else?

have you tried repeatedly tapping f8 on startup to get advanced options for Windows such as safe mode etc?

in the Linux live system if you run "gparted" what info is available re:partitions. most laptops these days have a recovery partition as opposed to recovery discs (cd/dvd) and can be accessed by a key press at startup f10 f12 or esc usually

edit, Google is my friend

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/49705-63-restore-toshiba-satellite-c660-factory-settings

try holding down zero on startup

brutus99

hi pah i get the cursor before i press f2 i have tried pressing all the f buttons at startup only f2 works
holding down zero does the same as f2.
partition....... filesystem...... label......... size............. used ......... unused........ flags
/dev/sda1 ntfs system 400.00MiB 206.93MiB 193.07Mib boot,diag
/dev/sda2 ntfs windows 149.04MiB 65.61MiB 83.23MiB
/dev/sda3 ntfs data 148.65MiB 10.05MiB 138.60MiB
when i run gparted this is what i get

5uspect

In Ubuntu have a look in /media or /mnt and see if your windows partition is there. This will let you backup all your files if you have not already done so.

Then you can try to fix the issue. If you can boot the Linux Live CD then this suggests that the optical drive is at least being seen in your boot sequence. Is the drive that the OS is on there too?

degsie

5uspect wrote: »

If you can boot the Linux Lice CD

That had my head scratching for a while...

pah

brutus99 wrote: »

hi pah i get the cursor before i press f2 i have tried pressing all the f buttons at startup only f2 works
holding down zero does the same as f2.
partition....... filesystem...... label......... size............. used ......... unused........ flags
/dev/sda1 ntfs system 400.00MiB 206.93MiB 193.07Mib boot,diag
/dev/sda2 ntfs windows 149.04MiB 65.61MiB 83.23MiB
/dev/sda3 ntfs data 148.65MiB 10.05MiB 138.60MiB
when i run gparted this is what i get

ok, so 3 partitions on one physical disk sda , not 100% on the MiB as to me that reads wrong

i'll assume
system 400GB
windows 150 GB
Data 150GB
roughly

Does that seem right to you - 700GB Total?

you also said

to uch: only says which os would you like to load. in my case windows 7. there is also an option to do a memory test.

this would suggest the mbr detects your windows installation - can you hit f8 at this stage?

what are you hoping to achieve or willing to do? a full wipe / copy files from hdd? etc

you have a few options imo

burn an iso of your windows version and reinstall windows either as a fresh install or windows repair

wipe or copy off the contents of sda3 and reformat it to install linux as dual boot - linux will then install a grub boot loader that might allow you to load the windows os

have you warranty for repair/replacement?

brutus99

i used the ubuntu boot cd to get into the hard drive i am going to do a disk image and then i will use my windows 7 cd to try and repair but if not reinstall windows alltogether thanks for the help guys i will let you know how i get on

brutus99

Thanks very much guys for all your help. I managed to use the ubuntu boot cd to make a copy of the hard drive and then i was able to re-install the os and restore the data
Thanks a million for all your advice