Laptop crashed but hopefully not burnt...

[sandiegojoe]

Hello All,
I thought I would try to post here as I am stumped with this problem.

I have a Toshiba Satellite M45-S359 Laptop. It is in good condition and worked perfectly for about a year with no problems until last week. Best laptop I have ever owned.

Last week while looking for apartments on Craigslist, I clicked a link to supposedly view some pictures of a place for rent. When I clicked the link, a page partially displayed and then a small window popped up saying I need to download an Active X Codec in order to view the page properly. I clicked OK and a DOS screen popped up and started installing a bunch of files. I shut down the laptop as soon as I could but it was too late.

When I restarted the machine I had some sort of virus or something. The windows messenger started popping up with warnings about the laptop being infected something called “worm.win32.netbooster” and offering to fix it if I click yes. Clicking yes took me to a website selling some product to get rid of it. The virus also changed my home page to this same site, and kept connecting to the internet and popping up ads for that site. None of these warnings were from my AVG virus and spyware software that has served me well until now.

This bug consumed much on the machines resources and made it difficult to continue using the laptop. I wanted to backup up my files and reload my system. It seemed to know what I was trying to do and kept doing things to hinder my progress.

I backed up about 60 gigs of personal and music files with my external drive, but this bug fought me all the way, removing the icons to my C and D drives, disabling my anti-virus software, corrupting some of my files, freezing the system, and eventually deleting my CD/DVD drivers making the drive inoperable.

At this point I tried to use my recovery CD but my drive wouldn’t work. I downloaded new drivers from Toshiba and was able to run the recovery CD. It ran successfully for about 20 minutes and got about half way through, when a window popped saying something like “Cannot Output File “QLL…(something)” Would you like to proceed with out this file?” I clicked yes and the screen went black, the laptop rebooted, and I now get a continuous loop with the same error messages no matter what I try. Also, no matter what button or combination of buttons I try at startup or otherwise, I CAN NOT GET INTO THE BIOS to change the boot sequence from network to CD, and I CAN NOT GET THE LAPTOP TO RECOGNIZE A DISK (recovery CD or windows XP CD, etc). When I boot up I get the initial Toshiba screen, it asks for and accepts my bios password, then proceeds to show the same error messages.

This weekend I completely disassembled the laptop, checked for loose pieces, damaged parts, and disconnected wires and cables. I found nothing out of place. I wanted to remove the CMOS battery to clear the BIOS, but found it to be spot welded and soldered to the mother board. I reassembled the machine and the problem remains. I have tried removing the hard drive and CD, and then restarting (nothing changes), reinstalling the components and restarting again, but still nothing different happens.

Here is the looping screen that I get:

Checking CD, No Bootable CD (flashes quickly with or without a CD in the drive)

Yukon PXE v3.03 alpha01 (20040913)
(c) Copyright 2003-2004 Marvell (r). All Rights Reserved

Pre Boot eXecution Environment (PXE) v2.1
(c) Copyright 1997-2000 Intel Corporation

PXE-E61: Media Test Failure, Check Cable

PXE-M0F: Exiting PXE ROM

Press Any Key To Continue (only displays when the hard drive is removed) (hitting any key just loops it again)

I’m totally stumped for what to do next. Any ideas or suggestion would be greatly appreciated.

San Diego Joe

[coolraj003]

Hi Joe

Sorry to hear all your trouble man. First off never ever say yes to any pop ups that say that you have a virus and would you like to remove it. You probably didnt have any virus up until then. Must be some sort of adware, but after clicking on the actual site you did get the virus for sure.

There is no need for you to worry about the hard ware as there is nothing wrong with the hardware. I think the solution for you is to take the hard drive and format it somehow to do a clean install. As your s is a laptop, it is going to be a pain in the neck to do a format using a different machine as you ll need to connect it to anoth machine. One of the guys on here did tell me that there is some sort of adaptor which allows laptop drive to be connected to a normal desktop but i havent been able to find out what it is called as yet.

Other than that i dont see any other obvious solution to your problem.

Raj

[sandiegojoe]

Good idea Raj...Thanks…Here’s what I tried,

The drive in my laptop is 100 gigs and has the SATA connections. I remembered that my girlfriend’s desktop computer has a spare set of those connectors dangling inside (I was in there adding a hard drive to hers a while back). I took the drive out of my laptop and plugged it into hers then started it up. It recognized my drive and then tried to repair it, stating it had some errors. I stopped that, and instead did a quick format. I tried to install a full version of Windows XP on the drive but it wanted to install it on her computer and not my drive. I unplugged her hard drive and booted her computer from the Windows CD and was able to do a complete Windows install onto my laptop drive.

I put the drive in my laptop and turned it on. It tries to start and then stops at the screen that says “Windows did not shut down properly last time…etc” and offers the options of starting in “Safe Mode…etc”. I can scroll up and down to the different options, but no matter which one I choose, it just freezes. It also freezes when the little 30 second timer at the bottom gets to 0.

I did however discover something I hadn’t read before anywhere else. As I was experimenting with various key combinations to try and get into my bios, I found this interesting trick:

When I push the power button on my Toshiba M45-S359 Laptop, I get the standard looking Toshiba screen (The Toshiba screen is black with large red letters that say “Toshiba” and under that are 4 small icon-like pictures), and after a few seconds then I get another black screen with small white letters asking for my bios password. I enter my password, and in my case, the computer fails to start. If I push “control-alt-delete” the laptop restarts. I immediately push and hold the “F12 button” and after a few seconds the laptop pauses at the Toshiba screen (Large red letters with 4 small icons). If I continue holding the “F12 button”, a row of dashes appears below the icons, and one of the dashes is orange colored like a cursor. The orange dash can be moved by the left and right arrows. Now that I look closer, I can see that these icons represent the “hard drive”, “CD drive”, “floppy drive”, and “network” as a boot source. Hitting enter selects the highlighted icon.

This information does me no good at this time…but I thought maybe some of you out there might be able to take advantage of this trick.

Anyways, I’m going to try repeating the above process, but this time I’m going to try doing a complete format, then check the hard drive for errors with chkdsk or something if I can, and then try reloading Windows on the drive again.

I’m still open to any additional ideas.
Thanks,
SanDiegoJoe

[sittas87]

Hi There friend
so far you did a good job. Heres wha t you do this time.in your girlfriends machine insert your drive again as you did go into windows and do a format by using disk managment (full format recommended) when done with the format remove your drive and insert it back into your notebook.using your boot options change it to boot from cdrom (cd/dvd)first and install windows that way on your machine.once the installation is done drope another post.
for Raj-converter info

[coolraj003]

You the man Sittas.....thanks

hey hey...I posted a massive post yesterday about the same bit that sittas has just explained, cant see it, m sure i didnt break no rules in that, anyways S*** happens.

Raj

[sandiegojoe]

Thanks for the reply Sittas,

Perhaps I wasn’t clear in my earlier posts…

The reason I am hooking my laptop hard drive to the desktop computer is because:

1.) I am totally unable to enter the laptop BIOS...No matter what I have tried…And…

2.) I am also totally unable to access the laptop CD/DVD drive... No matter what I’ve tried…

I’m still open to any creative ideas on how to do either of these things…

I believe the virus that I got, whether real or fake, has affected my bios and erased the CD/DVD drivers…

It is my hope that I can somehow load something on my hard drive that will allow me to start-up my laptop enough to:
* Flash the BIOS…
* Re-load the CD/DVD drivers (if necessary)…
* And then run the Toshiba recovery CD for a Full Re-install.

Thanks again,
SanDiegoJoe

[sittas87]

ohk,but you were able to access your BIOS before the format and install right??if so than try prost #4.theres a reason why i incline. However if thats not the case for you then alternatively you should take it to your local lappy repair shop seeing your cmos is welded to mobo.
??

[coolraj003]

Actually what i would suggest is connect the hard disk to other machine and format it, then reload the windows on this disk from the other machine and when the process ends it would ask you to restart the machne to get everything working. At that time "Switch it off without Restarting". then put the hard drive back to the laptop and start t up and from there it should work hopefully if not then as Sittas say take it to the local repair shop and see what they say?

Raj

[sittas87]

cool startegy

[coolraj003]

Well i was advised to do so on my laptop that i am trying to revive back from dead with a few odd issues. I didnt really have time to sort it out yet but i hope it works for him as his needs sounds urgent. As far as I am concerned its just when I get time to do it.

Raj

[sandiegojoe]

Shutting down before restarting is an excellent idea...I'll try that this weekend.

A former-network-admin friend at work told me that restart is when much of the computer specific information is ingrained into Windows...He also told me you can't move Windows XP from one computer to another after installation as it becomes hardware specific...But he thinks that maybe you can do it with Windows 95 or 98...So if the delayed restart thing doesn't work, I'll try loading Windows 95 or 98 on the drive...Anything just to get it started...Then go from there.

I think if I can breathe some life back into her then I can save her...Taking it to the shop is not an option...That would be admitting defeat...It's become a challange at this point...If I can't fix it myself, I'd rather sell it on eBay as-is, and then buy a newer better machine.

Thanks for the ideas guys,
SanDiegoJoe

[sandiegojoe]

Hello again,
I tried the restart suggestion...at both restart points...But it didn't work...Just a blank screen or the frozen Windows Safe-Mode screen.

I decided to go back a step and see if I could get the thing running in dos...Then maybe do something from there.

I found an ISO of DOS 7.1 and burned it to a CD...I hooked the laptop drive to the desktop and installed DOS...But first I had to re-format the drive to FAT32.

The laptop now boots to the DOS C:\ prompt but would not recognize my CD/DVD drive...I found an HP laptop Super Drive at the flea market for $5, put that in the laptop, and DOS recognized it…And no, the laptop top will not boot to this drive either.

I tried to run the Toshiba recovery CD and the Windows XP CD, but it gives me a message saying those can't run in DOS...The DOS help does however say that Windows 95 and 98 can run in DOS...So next I will try installing one of those.

Just wanted to give an update on my progress,
SanDiegoJoe

[coolraj003]

So maybe after gettin the win 95-98 running you may be able to get to the xp somehow. All the best man

Raj