Posted on 03/28/2014 12:10:27 PM PDT by TurboZamboni
What version of Windows are you using?
What has changed? You said you downloaded HM pro after the free trial expired, did you install it or just download it?
Please explain exactly what you see when you power up.
Write every message you see in order until it stops booting.
Does it give you the option to press F8 to boot into safe mode?
Once we know what you’re seeing and what O/S you have and what exactly has changed, we should be able to help although it might require reinstalling Windows and it sounds like you don’t have the disks. You might have an emergency partition Toshiba put on there with the O/S on it and you might be able to recover that way as well.
vista home premium service pack 2
yes.downloaded hitman pro paid version and rebooted after scanning.
f8 is not an option.
Mark for later when I have time to jack around with this.
Sometimes, F8 doesn’t show up. As soon as the Toshiba splash screen shows up, hit F8 several times and it should bring up the boot menu. If there isn’t an initial splash screen, as soon as it starts to power up, press F8 several times. Eventually it’ll beep meaning the kbd buffer is full but that means the O/S will recognize the F8 and give you the boot option if the boot loader is still there.
Try that and then we’ll go from there.
unplug computer,
take out battery,
re-insert battery,
plug back in
That is a great idea.
Pressing F2 at that point stops the boot process and gives you an opportunity to change many items in your cpu’s setup including a permanent change to the Boot Sequence...whether via HDD, the CD/DVD drive, or other methods...before continuing with the boot sequence and starting Windows.
You probably don’t want to change anything in that function.
Pressing F12 allows you a one-off, temporary chance to boot up from the cd/dvd/cd-rw drive (and a couple other methods). If you change to cd/dvd/cd-rw drive...the next time you attempt to start the cpu, it will boot from that drive just the one time.
That’s where/when you would want your original boot disc in the CD drive. The process will pull info from that disc instead of the hdd. The second time you start your computer, it reverts back to the original setup unless you stop the process again with the F12.
There’s even a diagnostics tool in the F12 area. Not sure how much that would help.
I’m not familiar with that program you mentioned.
“file not found’
Pull any and all camera flash drives/thumb drives/cds/dvds. Reboot. Joy?
Enter BIOS (usually DEL or F2), make sure BIOS can see the drive, and check boot order, make sure boot order includes your hard drive (set it to the TOP priority for this purpose). Reboot. Joy?
**If BIOS does not see the drive, major hdd fail. ALL stop./
If no joy, the boot sector of your hdd is corrupted, either by a virus, or Win pooped the bed on last shutdown. A win7 Recovery CD will have an option to fix the boot, if you have a Win7 box to make a boot CD from.
Other options (if BIOS sees the drive):
Bootable antivirus disc to check for bugs.
MiniWinXP or MiniWin7 to boot and run chkdsk and get data off...
Sling it in another machine as a secondary drive to do AV and chkdsk routines and get data off.
I apologize for the bad info. I’ll try to check the links next time.
Have you tried Control-Shift-Esc?
F8 (Toshiba laptop)... Didn’t work?
nope
You should still be able to get to the bios with a bad master boot record. If not f8, maybe some other key. Could try to boot it up on something else... But something else isn’t right if you can’t get to the bios.
But anyway... That bootmgr can be rebuilt with the bootrec command in DOS. Google for “rebuild bootmgr” and there are KB articles aplenty. What version of windows you have isn’t too important. The DOS commands should all be the same.
You would do well to STOP trying to fix it and WAIT until you try to find a Vista CD. It’s an older OS. Got any used PC stores around? My town is small and we have 4-5.
Anyone who ever cares to FIX their own laptop should ALWAYS demand from the manufacturer the OS disc, find another manufacturer, have an OS disc ‘cause you’re a geek like me or plan on paying someone else to fix it.
.02
f2
then tabbed right to “boot”
it lists 1-6
HDD #1 /SSD # 1 at top
then
2. eSATA HDD
3. CD/DVD
4. FDD
5.LAN
6 USB memory
assuming I want 1?
f2 and f12 are the only options given.
f8 does not work(tried repeat tapping/holding)
Press F5 at boot and pick boot in safe mode with a command prompt. Then run the program bootrec.exe from the prompt. Instructions on that program here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392
There is a decent chance you will not be able to boot to the command prompt at all and need a bootable Vista disk.
I assume F2 gets you into the Bios, what does F12 get you? Don’t let it change anything until you know what it’s changing.
Did it come with Vista? If so, did it come with an O/S disk or is it on a partition on the hard drive and you were supposed to burn it onto CDs or a DVD?
My Sony laptop had Vista as well on a separate partition you were supposed to burn your own copy but I seem to recall there’s a way to boot into that.
Have you backed up your data? If you go through a restore using Toshiba’s utilities, assuming it has them, it’s possible it will format your disk losing all your data.
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