I am trying to rescue the hard drive from my son's laptop. It started failing to boot about a week ago, reaching the "Starting Windows XP" screen and then restarting after a while. Wouldn't boot into safe mode either.
It would, however, boot from a SlakLive CD into Linux, and I used that to backup all the critical data files over the network.
I talked to Toshiba Technical Support, who advised that only a system restore would work at this point. Unfortunately, system restore found errors on the drive and won't finish running.
So I went to Fry's and picked up a USB enclosure, and I'm trying to format the drive using that. We will see what happens, but I think it ultimately will have to go to the service center for a new drive.
Update: No go so back to Toshiba it goes. Apparently the drive is fried.
Posted on December 3, 2004 10:31 PM