Mr Buckshot
July 5th, 2009, 10:24 PM
I'm trying to reformat a 2006 Toshiba Satellite A105-S1014 laptop (doesn't belong to me, it's for someone else), using the recovery disc provided in the box. So the instructions on the CD case tell me to place the disc in the drive, boot up, hold down the C key until the Toshiba logo appears, then the system recovery process can begin.
So after I hold down, then let go of, the C key, the laptop displays a loading screen that says Loading RamDisk Image - which makes sense. After the "Ramdisk image" finishes loading, the screen shows that the Toshiba Recovery Tool is loading. When that finishes, that's when everything screws up.
Basically, the Toshiba Recovery Tool will finish loading...then the screen briefly flashes a different colour, and then the laptop reboots, and begins the "Loading Ramdisk Image" process again. And then the "Toshiba Recovery Tool" loads. And then it reboots and repeats the process, in what is probably an infinite loop. The laptop just refuses to begin the actual system restore process, it just gets stuck like this.
So I decide to try it the other way - I eject the recovery disc, and boot into Windows XP. Then I insert the disc once Windows has done loading, and an autoplay menu comes up. I select the option that allows me to do a complete system recovery that wipes the HDD (my intention). I then get a message telling me that the laptop will now restart and load from the CD to begin the system recovery process. But when the laptop restarts, the infinite loop I just mentioned above happens again.
I have tried going into the BIOS to manually set a "boot from CD drive" option, and I still get nothing but an infinite loop - the laptop says it's preparing for the system restore by "loading ramdisk image" and loading "toshiba recovery tool," then it repeats the process. I have attempted this about 5 times - on the 5th try, I let the infinite loop run for about 3 hours and it still didn't work.
Anyone know what the problem is? Help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance. I have tried to google this, but all the pages I found regarding problems with system recovery did not mention a problem like this bizarre one.
I highly doubt they'll help, but here are the specs of this Toshiba (thankfully it's not mine lols):
1.5 Ghz Intel Celeron M
1 GB DDR2 RAM, reduced to 896 MB due to IGP stealing from it
ATI Radeon Xpress 200M integrated
60 GB 5400rpm Fujitsu MHV2060BH hard drive
24x CD/8x DVD TSSTcorp CD-RW/DVD-ROM TS-L462C optical drive (this device might be the source of the problem, I don't know)
So after I hold down, then let go of, the C key, the laptop displays a loading screen that says Loading RamDisk Image - which makes sense. After the "Ramdisk image" finishes loading, the screen shows that the Toshiba Recovery Tool is loading. When that finishes, that's when everything screws up.
Basically, the Toshiba Recovery Tool will finish loading...then the screen briefly flashes a different colour, and then the laptop reboots, and begins the "Loading Ramdisk Image" process again. And then the "Toshiba Recovery Tool" loads. And then it reboots and repeats the process, in what is probably an infinite loop. The laptop just refuses to begin the actual system restore process, it just gets stuck like this.
So I decide to try it the other way - I eject the recovery disc, and boot into Windows XP. Then I insert the disc once Windows has done loading, and an autoplay menu comes up. I select the option that allows me to do a complete system recovery that wipes the HDD (my intention). I then get a message telling me that the laptop will now restart and load from the CD to begin the system recovery process. But when the laptop restarts, the infinite loop I just mentioned above happens again.
I have tried going into the BIOS to manually set a "boot from CD drive" option, and I still get nothing but an infinite loop - the laptop says it's preparing for the system restore by "loading ramdisk image" and loading "toshiba recovery tool," then it repeats the process. I have attempted this about 5 times - on the 5th try, I let the infinite loop run for about 3 hours and it still didn't work.
Anyone know what the problem is? Help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance. I have tried to google this, but all the pages I found regarding problems with system recovery did not mention a problem like this bizarre one.
I highly doubt they'll help, but here are the specs of this Toshiba (thankfully it's not mine lols):
1.5 Ghz Intel Celeron M
1 GB DDR2 RAM, reduced to 896 MB due to IGP stealing from it
ATI Radeon Xpress 200M integrated
60 GB 5400rpm Fujitsu MHV2060BH hard drive
24x CD/8x DVD TSSTcorp CD-RW/DVD-ROM TS-L462C optical drive (this device might be the source of the problem, I don't know)