Tesla Posted March 11, 2014 Posted March 11, 2014 HAd a laptop with me for the past few days, it seems to intermittently decide whether it wants to boot or not, it always detects the hard drive inb the BIOS, but it just sometimes decides to do a blinking white cursor in the top right of the screen, fialing to even attempt to boot to windows. i have run the recovery console (XP) and ran fixMBR and FIXBOOT, and also when it has picked up the windows OS, ran chkdsk /r (which didn't pick up any errors) is this likely to be a hard drive issue, or something internal? (id usually always say hard drive, but having a clear chkdsk scan has thrown me slightly) also anyone got any other suggestions to try?
difinity Posted March 11, 2014 Posted March 11, 2014 Try running the hard drive diagnostic from the manufacturer.
Tesla Posted March 14, 2014 Author Posted March 14, 2014 (edited) This is going onto a whole new level of crazy if i boot it up with nothing in it except harddrive, it fails, eithe ri get the blinking white cursor, or it says operazting system not found. However, if i put a CD in it, it seems to boot up without fail, completly disregarding the CD even though it's currently first in boot order. this works regardless of whether the cd is a "bootable " cd or one you play whilst in the OS..... Edited March 14, 2014 by Tesla
mac_shinobi Posted March 14, 2014 Posted March 14, 2014 what make and model of laptop is this and if I re-call correctly, I think there was a mention of a stone or another make of laptop doing something like this, I think it required a bios / firmware type update to resolve the issue Going from memory here.... think it was this thread or post : http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows-7/49214-os-not-found.html
Tesla Posted March 14, 2014 Author Posted March 14, 2014 thats a lot of reading for a friday afternoon.... lol its an out of warranty RM notebook Value 220.... it's so weird though :|
mac_shinobi Posted March 14, 2014 Posted March 14, 2014 (edited) Options that I can gather from the stone laptop were 1) Update bios 2) Delete all partitions and get XP or another way of formatting the hard drive partition as the stone computer only worked with XP OS formatting and partitioning the hard drive ( as it proffered the 100mb partition at the end instead of the way that windows 7 formats the drive with the 500mb partition at the beginning of the drive ) 3) A Mention of setting the SATA ( Serial ATA ) Mode to AHCI If possible May have been some other options but haven't fully read that post Also how are you attempting to image or how was this originally imaged ? 4) Was a mention of re running the commands regards to fixboot and fixmbr etc but if it still does it Also curious - does it make any difference if you adjust the boot order or take the optical drive out of the boot order ? Also see if you can load windows even if you have to use the optical drive to ensure it daisy chains it to boot into windows and check the boot.ini file to ensure it is pointing to the correct partition(s) etc etc Edited March 14, 2014 by mac_shinobi
Tesla Posted March 17, 2014 Author Posted March 17, 2014 (edited) doesnt seem to have a bios update on the rm support site... tried installing windows 7, it installed, then failed when it tried to load up after the restart, just saying operating system not found.... I may, or may have not, forghotten that i had excluded the HDD from boot, as i had issues booting to CD.... done all the fixboot stuff.... will just see if reinstalling windows makes a difference.. Edited March 17, 2014 by Tesla 1
mac_shinobi Posted March 17, 2014 Posted March 17, 2014 doesnt seem to have a bios update on the rm support site... tried installing windows 7, it installed, then failed when it tried to load up after the restart, just saying operating system not found.... I may, or may have not, forghotten that i had excluded the HDD from boot, as i had issues booting to CD.... done all the fixboot stuff.... will just see if reinstalling windows makes a difference.. At least I'm not the only one that does silly things like that and then realises a few mins later and updates my question etc to update everyone and say well actually I've done a school boy type error and done or not done x, y and z etc Good to know that you are making some progress and thanks for the updates @Tesla
Tesla Posted March 17, 2014 Author Posted March 17, 2014 (edited) now its just sat saying "Starting windows" this laptop may have to hit the graveyard soon, even if i get it owrking, it's liekly to mess up again very soon i'd imagaine... aaaaand we're back to the blinking cursor. Edited March 17, 2014 by Tesla
Tesla Posted March 18, 2014 Author Posted March 18, 2014 reinstalled windows 7 again (the whole not having HDD in boot order messed it up somewhat the first time round) Seems fine so far....there's still plenty of time for it to mess up though. 1
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