Solved! Just Wrecked This Toshiba Satellite

[FlyingTripod]

Hey fellas,

I just bought a used Satellite P205D-S7802 from a friend and went ahead to try and reinstall Windows 7 64-bit via a USB since it was sporting Vista 32-bit.

I changed the boot order in the BIOS to USB (although it labelled it as a HDD?) to load the ISO as per usual but I think it destroyed the MBR or something because now nothing works beyond the loading screen as it'll blue screen in to an instant reset. Safe Mode included (although it did work once). IRQ_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL is something I can catch before it just packs up.

It's even being really nasty when I try to load a recovery disk as it'll constantly beep and eventually become unresponsive.

I really don't know what to do. I reset the BIOS to default, I've tried to run recovery software, I've tried booting in to safe mode but nothing will break through the windows load screen.

Everything was working 100% fine with Vista then I went to load a Windows 7 iso and now I'm left with wondering if I'll need an entirely new hard disk.

The only thing I can think of it whether or not it's the USB stick which caused the problems so I'm burning the ISO to a DVD.

This is the first time in about dozen installations that I've ever seen this happen.

 

[dudio]

Try the DVD install and see how that goes, otherwise until you get a better solution, you can try Restoring the laptop:
Recovery procedure should be hold down the "0" key while *powering-on* the system, not rebooting.

 

[FlyingTripod]

When I use the install DVD to go through the steps it'll get to about a quarter of the way in to "Windows is loading files" and just hangs.

I'll try restoring it.

It doesn't give me anything as far as restoring is concerned. I remove all peripherals, hold 0 as it boots up and it just pushes me in to the boot options screen where I can load safe mode, last good config, or as normal. No warning screen.

 

[dudio]

You may want to try waiting out the 'hanging'

 

[FlyingTripod]

Even if the activity LED isn't doing anything and the HD/DVD drive stops?

 

[FlyingTripod]

aaaaaaaaand now it's literally refusing to turn off after it hung on the splash screen after I changed boot order to dvd then hdd.

Wow, don't I feel like a dumpster fire for making it do all this.

E: Removed the battery to force it to turn off and now it appears to be bricked.

Literal WTF moment here for something so simple an installing a new OS.

 

[Solandri]

How old is this laptop? For a long time during the 2000s, Toshiba was configuring all their laptops as RAID using Intel's Rapid Storage Technology even though there was only one hard drive. To install a new OS, you had to configure the drive as RAID and modify the install media with Intel RST drivers. I struggled with it and ended up reinstalling XP, then doing a XP to Vista upgrade (and later a Vista to Win 7 upgrade).

To get the recovery media to install, you had to set the drive type to RAID. I don't recall the symptoms when you tried to reinstall with the drive type set to IDE, but I do remember it didn't work.

 

[FlyingTripod]

It's probably from around 2010.

At this point though the laptop is dead so I wouldn't be able to give you any more details or to try new things. For some reason when I changed the boot order to DVD first HDD second it literally just stopped everything after I saved on exit. It wouldn't even let me power it down so I had to pull the battery and now it's completely unresponsive after going through battery troubleshooting steps (diconnect ac, remove battery, hold power min+, reconnect) several times.

I literally bricked a perfectly working laptop for wanting to install a new OS.