Satellite A35 saga

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

Read here that leaving the battery in was a bad idea.
Removed the battery.
....
Started the laptop, went messing with the tangle of power cords
OOPS. Unplugged the Toshiba. While it was booting.
Wouldn't boot anymore.
Keeps restarting.
No safe mode, no previous setup work.
A brief blue flash before it restarts.
Recovery disk wants to wipe the HD clean! And warns against interruption!

HElp at Microsoft: F8 at bootup gives advanced boot options.
Disable automatic restart on error, so I can read the dang blue screen of
death.
Which says
UNmountable_boot_volume

Plugged that into the Microsoft XP search and came up with:
boot to recovery console, run chkdsk /r.
Where is the recovery console?
On the Toshiba recovery disk?
nope, it just wants to wipe and re-install.
Call Toshiba.
Nothing you can do, sorry, send it in.
But I DO have an XP installation disk from my other computer...
"you're welcome to try but Toshiba can't support..."

I tried.
It took a LONG time.
It worked.
WHEW!
(now to make some backups... quick)


--
Fritz Oppliger

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

That's "sort of" the reason that I suggest a UPS (for ***ALL***
computers) if you remove the battery (if you don't remove the battery,
the battey IS, effectively, a UPS .... but a very expensive one).

When the power to a running computer gets interrupted, there is a risk
of losing the ENTIRE contents of the hard drive. It doesn't usually
happen, but it can. The normal concern is run-of-the-mill power line
dropouts (storms, transients, etc.), but unplugging the power cord (as
you did) is always a possibility (even on a desktop PC). Of course, a
UPS may not save you from that, which falls in the "klutz" category (we
all do those kinds of things, however, at times).

You posts brings up two other points:

-the importance of backups (how many times has this been repeated?)

-the problem with OEM recovery CDs. The recovery console is on a
"retail" or [Microsoft] "OEM" Windows XP CD. It's not on the "recovery"
CDs that you get from the very large OEMs, however, in most cases (and
certainly not from your Toshiba CD).

Note that the recovery console can be permanently installed on the hard
drive as a "multi-boot" option (even if you already have two OS'
multi-booting]. The command is:

D:\i386\winnt32.exe /cmdcons

However, in your case, I'm not sure that even that would have worked.



Fritz Oppliger wrote:

> Read here that leaving the battery in was a bad idea.
> Removed the battery.
> ...
> Started the laptop, went messing with the tangle of power cords
> OOPS. Unplugged the Toshiba. While it was booting.
> Wouldn't boot anymore.
> Keeps restarting.
> No safe mode, no previous setup work.
> A brief blue flash before it restarts.
> Recovery disk wants to wipe the HD clean! And warns against interruption!
>
> HElp at Microsoft: F8 at bootup gives advanced boot options.
> Disable automatic restart on error, so I can read the dang blue screen
> of death.
> Which says
> UNmountable_boot_volume
>
> Plugged that into the Microsoft XP search and came up with:
> boot to recovery console, run chkdsk /r.
> Where is the recovery console?
> On the Toshiba recovery disk?
> nope, it just wants to wipe and re-install.
> Call Toshiba.
> Nothing you can do, sorry, send it in.
> But I DO have an XP installation disk from my other computer...
> "you're welcome to try but Toshiba can't support..."
>
> I tried.
> It took a LONG time.
> It worked.
> WHEW!
> (now to make some backups... quick)
>
>