Member Avatar for eric.curry.31 
I have a toshiba c655 and one day it just stop booting up. All I can get on it is a black screen with a cursor.
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Quick diagnostic path and next steps (short, practical):

As and already pointed toward boot-media and drive failure, focus next on confirming what the hardware actually reports before replacing parts. A black screen with a blinking cursor can be caused by a dead/undetected drive, a corrupt bootloader, bad RAM, or less commonly a failing SATA controller/motherboard.

  1. Check whether the BIOS/boot menu sees the HDD. On Toshibas press the setup/boot key shown at power-on (often F2 for setup or F12 for a one‑time boot menu). If the drive is not listed, power down, remove battery/AC, open the HDD bay and reseat the drive and connector (take basic anti‑static care). If still not listed, try the drive in another PC or a SATA→USB adapter to see if it appears.

  2. If the drive is visible on another machine, run a SMART check (example tools: smartmontools) to confirm health:
    smartmontools: https://www.smartmontools.org/

  3. If the drive is detected by the BIOS but Windows stops at a blinking cursor, the boot records may be damaged. Boot from recovery media and run these commands from a Windows command prompt to repair the boot sector and BCD:

    bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot
bootrec /rebuildbcd
chkdsk C: /f

  4. To rule out RAM, run a dedicated memory test. Memtest86 is bootable and easy to use — let it complete several full passes:
    memtest86: https://www.memtest86.com/

  5. If optical media isn’t working, make a bootable USB instead (instructions for creating a USB stick are available here):
    Ubuntu USB how‑to: https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/create-a-usb-stick-on-windows

If the drive makes clicking noises or is not recognized externally, stop and consider a data‑recovery specialist. If testing is uncomfortable, a local repair shop can do the checks above and safely recover files before replacement. These steps should narrow the fault so a correct repair (or data recovery) can be chosen.

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Member Avatar for JorgeM

If you are getting throught the POST (power on self test), then to a blinking screen, it is most likely that your hard drive has failed.

To test the rest of your computer's components, get a CD that is bootable, such as an OS installation CD, or a Linux bootable, and put it into the CD rom and boot the computer. if it boots to the CD, then your computer is OK, and it is a problem with the hard drive.

If you have important data on that drive, sometimes even if the hard drive fails, you can still access it by removing the hard drive and plugging into another computer via a USB interface.

Member Avatar for eric.curry.31

Thanks! Im not getting anything but the startup screen and then it goes to the black screen and cursor.

Member Avatar for caperjack

did you do as suggested and get the linux boot cd to see if you computer actually works .a learning curve for you maybe ,but ,its that or a computer repair shop /

Member Avatar for eric.curry.31

I tried that and I'm getting a error saying I don't have an OS

Member Avatar for caperjack

did you follow the advice on the link and correctly s burniong software that burns the .ISO file to disk ,and not just copy the iso file to the disk .

use a program like isoimage burn if you need to .
http://www.imgburn.com/

Edited by caperjack
Member Avatar for eric.curry.31

OKAY I'LL TRY IT AGAIN. THANKS!

Member Avatar for eric.curry.31

Thanks for everything I think is my hard drive. It's not running at all. The computer isn't reading the disk at all.

Member Avatar for caperjack

the idea of using the disk is to ruel out the hrddrive ,the disk will load linux into RAM ,so if its not loading its something else .like ram or motherboard .
remember when i refer to harddrive i mean the drive inside the computer /laptop

Member Avatar for eric.curry.31

Oh okay! Yes I remember when you said that. I'll check my RAM.

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