Toshiba M40 Laptop -- Startup Refusal

[dvdmations]

Hey all, Long time reader -- first time poster.

I have a Toshiba M40 Laptop (canadain version) and as luck would have it 1 month after my warranty expired... bam, the computer refused to work.

First off, I dropped the pc a while back, and as a result the DVD drive stopped reading CD's... it constantly made "Static" BZzzZZ sounds after the drop incident. Unfortunantly I never had time to fix it...

I use my Laptop quite often, and now all of a sudden -- the laptop refused to work, after a long charging -- now it gives me the error you see on the attachment.

Apparently that's a program used to load pc's without hard-drives, correct? if so does that mean my hard-drive is messed up?

Any ideas? suggestions? (if so please include an estimate of how much it might cost)

also -- no I can't go to a toshiba retailer at the moment, they're too far. so will awit to hear your suggestions first. thanks.

[BuggZ]

The attachment is not clear enough to read the text on my display, but if you are getting through POST and seeing an error you should be able to diagnose the problem fairly easily. If you have access to USB floppy drive, you should be able to boot from the floppy and possibly run a diagnostics program. If your DVD drive will still read DVDs, you can try getting a copy of Knoppix burned to a bootable DVD. If you can boot Knoppix, you should be able to access your hard drive, if you can't then the hard drive or controller may be damaged. Another thing to try is remove the hard drive and install it in a USB external drive enclosure and connect it to another computer and try to access the information. This will also help you save any important data that is stored on the drive. If you can post the text of the error message, I amy be able to help you further.

[dvdmations]

sorry, i thought the text was readable, it is on my screen:

"Yukon PXE v3.03 alpha 01

copyright.... bla bla

Pre-boot eXecution Environment (EXE) v2

press any key to continue"

pressing any key does nothing...

[BuggZ]

It appears the laptop is attempting to boot from a network device (PXE). Either the laptop can't find a working boot device (hard drive or CD/DVD drive) first or the boot order has changed. On try entering the BIOS setup screen and make sure the hard drive is set as the first boot device. Some Toshibas show a series of icons below the Toshiba logo during boot. If this is the case with your laptop, highlight the hard drive using the arrow keys and press enter to select the hard drive as the boot device. If you are able to set the hard drive as the default boot device but it changes again after you shot the laptop off, then you may need to replace the CMOS battery that maintains the BIOS settings. If the BIOS won't detect the hard drive at all, then the hard drive or the IDE controller on the motherboard may be defective.