A friend brought me her laptop to try to figure out why it suddenly refuses to boot. On initial power-up I get the Toshiba splash screen which looks normal, but then the machine goes to a black screen and from that point is unresponsive.
My first thought was to determine whether the machine would boot from a Linux USB stick, or from a Linux live CD. I attempted both options from the F12 boot options menu, and the machine would not boot from either choice.
I then removed the hard disk from the laptop and installed it in a USB disk drive enclosure. If I plug the drive into my own desktop machine running Windows, I can read the files on the drive from the laptop without any difficulty. So the drive seems to be working fine.
Next, I checked to see if I could boot from the Linux USB stick with the hard drive still removed from the Laptop. Turns out that I can, and Linux runs just fine.
Finally, I plugged the hard drive, still in the USB drive caddy, into the laptop wile it was still running Linux. I would have expected that Linux would be able to mount the disc and view the Windows files. Linux shows the presence of the disk, but will not mount it.
My working theory is that the drive is basically ok, but the boot record may have been damaged somehow. But I don't have an obvious way to prove it, or to fix the problem if that's what is wrong. The laptop was running Windows 10, and I don't have another Windows 10 machine to fix it from.
So, where do I go from here?
My first thought was to determine whether the machine would boot from a Linux USB stick, or from a Linux live CD. I attempted both options from the F12 boot options menu, and the machine would not boot from either choice.
I then removed the hard disk from the laptop and installed it in a USB disk drive enclosure. If I plug the drive into my own desktop machine running Windows, I can read the files on the drive from the laptop without any difficulty. So the drive seems to be working fine.
Next, I checked to see if I could boot from the Linux USB stick with the hard drive still removed from the Laptop. Turns out that I can, and Linux runs just fine.
Finally, I plugged the hard drive, still in the USB drive caddy, into the laptop wile it was still running Linux. I would have expected that Linux would be able to mount the disc and view the Windows files. Linux shows the presence of the disk, but will not mount it.
My working theory is that the drive is basically ok, but the boot record may have been damaged somehow. But I don't have an obvious way to prove it, or to fix the problem if that's what is wrong. The laptop was running Windows 10, and I don't have another Windows 10 machine to fix it from.
So, where do I go from here?