Satellite A215 will not boot past BIOS?

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st33l

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I've got a Toshiba Satellite A215 and it will not boot past BIOS it just hangs. No beeps or messages stating anything is in fact 'Wrong'. If I hit F2 (System Utilities) or F12 (Boot Menu) nothing will happen.

Although, if I hit F2 for System Utilities it does beep but it just says Please Wait... in the bottom left hand corner of the screen and still nothing happens. Sometimes I can get into the Boot Menu if I press F12 while upon start up. The status bar on the bios gets to about 3/4's full and just stops there.

I reseated the RAM thinking that could be it. I'm guessing that this is a HDD Failure? I don't want to fork out 60 to 80 bucks on a HDD and it not be the problem. It's the only logical thing I can think it could be. The HDD indicator isn't flashing when I turn the laptop on.



Any advice as to what it could be is very much so appreciated!
 
Solution
Just worked on a laptop with this same issue.

Remove the optical drive, the IDE controller is likely faulty. I've tried several other optical drives in the laptop with the same result, leading me to believe it's the controller or the BIOS causing the issue. I don't know if there is a BIOS update available for it or not...but your computer should boot to windows once you pull out the optical drive.



You could test the system without hard disk involvement if you download a Linux OS and burn it to CD then run it as a LiveCD in RAM. Try PCLinuxOS from http://www.pclinuxos.com.
 

st33l

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That kind of crossed my mind, I don't know why it would just freeze when I try to get into the BIOS settings.

I can't boot from a disk, shouldn't I be able to regardless if there is a Hard drive?
 


Sounds worse than a simple hard disk problem, I'm afraid. I had problems with a similar machine a while back when it was brought to me because it had suddenly started asking for a BIOS password for the first time in its six year life. I was satisfied with the customer's proof of ownsership and had no reason to doubt them but I couldn't get past that stage. Sometimes it would boot to Windows or my Linux LiveCD but most of teh time it stalled at the password stage.


 

st33l

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I've tried resetting the BIOS to no avail.. I'm guessing the Motherboard is dead!

It all happened after a Windows Update. It won't even boot from disk.
 


As unikely as it seems, it a Windows update caused this, it can be recovered - whatever else we can accuse M$ of, remotely destroying motherboards isn't one of them. :D

You need to run CheckDisk or similar in there to correct drive errors and if you can't boot from the OS CD you need another tool. If you know the maker of the hard disk, download their own tool but if not, use something like Hirens BootCD or UB4WINCD and scan for errors and fix them at the same time.
[/#000ff]
 

japrater

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Just worked on a laptop with this same issue.

Remove the optical drive, the IDE controller is likely faulty. I've tried several other optical drives in the laptop with the same result, leading me to believe it's the controller or the BIOS causing the issue. I don't know if there is a BIOS update available for it or not...but your computer should boot to windows once you pull out the optical drive.
 
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Sam_03

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japrater, I want to say one thing "THANK YOU SO MUCH, for sharing it, " It just worked for me,

I tried everything i could find and nothing worked , until I saw your post. IT WORKED!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks Sam
 
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