Toshiba laptop can't get past BIOS.

[rebeccaowen]

I need help badly.

My Toshiba Satellite A665 can't boot past BIOS. In other words... I can't boot regularly, can't get into safe mode, can't get into windows. After the Toshiba logo at the start, it just leads to a black screen with a flashing cursor in the upper left.

I tried the hardware recovery thing, which is: press and hold 0, then press the power button, etc. That brought me to the Windows Boot Manager and I got the following message:
"Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the cause.
To fix the problem:
1. Insert your Windows installation disc and restart your computer.
2. Choose your language settings, and click “Next”
3. Click repair your computer”
If you do not have this disc, contact your system admin or computer manufacturer for assistance.

Status: 0xc000000f
Info: The boot selection failed because a required device is inaccessible."
-------
I reseated the RAM multiple times. Tried different RAM. I took out the battery. I took out the optical drive. I took out and reseated the hard drive. I tried all of these things in different configurations and sequences and nothing gets me past BIOS.

I don't have a physical Recovery Disk and can't seem to find a way to create the "Windows Recovery Environment" on a bootable usb thumb drive.

My objective is to reformat the laptop to the original factory settings, but I can't get past the BIOS.

What do I do?

Here's my laptop specs (if needed):
Toshiba Satellite A665
64bit Windows7 Home Premium
4GB RAM

 

[cl-jeffrey]

Was there anything you did differently? Did you add any memory? What peripherals do you have connected to your laptop if any? Did this start out of no where or did it slowly happen.

What you can do is use a friends laptop or computer and create a recovery disc on there computer then put that disc into your laptop or you can borrow there windows disc.

Here is a link that should help you on your journey to getting your laptop up and working again. Change the disc to a 64 bit as that's what you have installed.
http/www.sevenforums.com/crashes-debugging/209281-boot-manager-status-0xc000000f-boot-selection-failed.html

 

[smorizio]

if the hardd rive is fine..holding the o or o key at post should start the recovery of the laptop software per google searches.

 

[rebeccaowen]

Was there anything you did differently? Did you add any memory? What peripherals do you have connected to your laptop if any? Did this start out of no where or did it slowly happen.

Nothing different. No memory added. No peripherals.
Laptop was notoriously slow to bootup, so used CCleaner to uninstall "crapware" and removed non-critical software from Windows "startup".

What you can do is use a friends laptop or computer and create a recovery disc on there computer then put that disc into your laptop or you can borrow there windows disc.

I'm surrounded by working laptops, but NONE come with a recovery disc, nor the Windows7 cd. I don't have any blank DVDs laying around. I do have a 8GB USB thumb drive. Can I do anything with that for creating a recovery environment?

Here is a link that should help you on your journey to getting your laptop up and working again. Change the disc to a 64 bit as that's what you have installed.
http/www.sevenforums.com/crashes-debugging/209281-boot-manager-status-0xc000000f-boot-selection-failed.html

I think I've seen/read this link earlier today, but I'll review it again.

if the hardd rive is fine..holding the o or o key at post should start the recovery of the laptop software per google searches.

Did you read what I wrote? I did press 0. That monkey routine got me nowhere.

Perhaps there's a corrupted sector on the hdd, but how would I check this when I can't get past BIOS?

 

[cl-jeffrey]

There is a link inside the link I sent that you can create a repair disc with any of the laptops or computers around you.

Make sure you go to the computer that also has windows 64.

Goodnews the link I will put below actually has a link where you can download the repair disc.

http/maximumpcguides.com/windows-7/create-a-windows-7-system-repair-disc/

 

[rebeccaowen]

I may have solved the problem by using a combination of hitting F12 and pressing the power button, in addition to two changes made in the BIOS. At the time of this writing, it's been going through a factory restore for the last 6 hours! That's correct... 6 hours. Despite it being slow, I'm stoked as it appears I have a working laptop that will hopefully run like it's brand new.
I'll post which BIOS settings were changed after the install is done (I need to get back into BIOS to remember which settings were changed).
Stay tuned....

 

[rebeccaowen]

Well, that didn't last long. The computer was very sluggish and took over 10 minutes to boot up. It's very unresponsive. So, I I restarted it and now it won't boot into Windows again. Crap.

So, I removed the hard drive from the bad Toshiba laptop and put it into my brand new HP laptop. It immediately began to boot and went into chkdsk mode. At stage 4 of 5, it replaced a bad cluster. When it finally reached 100%, it flashed a screen saying a bunch of stuff and couldn't write it all down since it went so fast. But I did see something about it added 164 bad clusters. Not sure what that means, but assume the hard drive got fixed a bit.
Anyway, it booted up fine on my new HP laptop and began installing a ton of device drivers. Realizing that I don't want to taint my good HP laptop with a bunch of irrelevant drivers, I shut down the machine.

To me this says the hard drive is fine, no?

I replaced the hard drive back in the Toshiba machine and was able to boot into Safe Mode by hitting F8. I clicked "Repair your computer" but it didn't find anything wrong. Hmmm...
I then ran a hardware memory test and it appears to have passed successfully. It's now rebooting into Windows, but it's taking a long time to boot again. It did generate a screen I've never seen which said:
"Windows is not genuine. Your computer might be running a counterfeit copy". (Perhaps this has something to do with installing into my HP laptop... I don't know).

I'm beginning to think there is a conflict between devices or something, since it's so F'n slow. I'd hate to buy a new hard drive only to find that the hard drive is not the problem. You can't return a hard drive once it's installed.

Any suggestions on what to do from here?

 

[smorizio]

sounds like one of two issues...the hard drive controllers on the Toshiba laptop is bad. or the cpu fan as failed and the laptop cpu is running slow so it wont over heat.if it under warranty i would send it in. if not see if your credit card has extended the laptop warranty some do some dont. if not see if there a recall or any extended warranty for the laptop.

 

[rebeccaowen]

sounds like one of two issues...the hard drive controllers on the Toshiba laptop is bad. or the cpu fan as failed and the laptop cpu is running slow so it wont over heat.if it under warranty i would send it in. if not see if your credit card has extended the laptop warranty some do some dont. if not see if there a recall or any extended warranty for the laptop.

Not sure how many fans are in the laptop, but I definitely hear a fan going, even when it was not booting into Windows.
How can I test the hard drive controllers?

This thing is ~3 years old, so way beyond a warranty. I'd like to fix it myself and consider it a challenge.

Anyone else have ideas?

Thanks!

 

[smorizio]

go into the bios...turn off sound..netowrk..cd-rom usb...and see if the system speeds up. if it does....turn one device back on till it slows down again. also try using one ram stick if the laptop has two one of them may have gone bad..

 

[rebeccaowen]

go into the bios...turn off sound..netowrk..cd-rom usb...and see if the system speeds up. if it does....turn one device back on till it slows down again. also try using one ram stick if the laptop has two one of them may have gone bad..

There's only one fan, and it's running fine.

In terms of the harddrive controller, I was told that my notebook computer has the HDD controller built into the chipset, and that is built into the motherboard. Without changing the motherboard there's nothing I can do. Some think the HDD is failing. I finished running chkdsk, but I'm having trouble booting into Windows again. A before, it's saying the hard drive failed and takes me to the Boot Menu.

After dozens of restarts, it appears to be going into Windows now. I'm going to visit the Event Viewer and grab the chkdsk report and post it here.
Perhaps someone can make sense of it and enlighten me with what could be happening.

I'd really like other input from others.

 

[rebeccaowen]

Anyone out there?
Bueller?

 

[rebeccaowen]

Well... this forum was EXTREMELY helpful!

 

[syndicate22]

I had the same problem. Updated the bios and was able to continue with the recovery / OS reinstallation.

Version 2.80 - 2012-11-23
•Fixed: The computer will hang at the Windows logo when "Fast Boot" is enabled.

 

[sandylynn]

Well... this forum was EXTREMELY helpful!

I also have a Toshiba A665-6094 and it has been the laptop from H-E-double tooth pics! Since day-one, it has been horribly slow. As you described earlier, I had the same thing happen to mine several times. I have had to restore it to factory/out of box '5' times. The first time I had to restore the laptop it was only 3 weeks old. It's on its 3rd or 4th HDD. I bought a sony the same day for my daughter and it has NEVER had an issue. The Toshiba has fried two mouse receivers and Toshiba said to send it back to them because it sounded like a 'grounding issue'. when I got it back the work order said they replaced the HDD. Since when does the HDD cause receivers to fry? Now its back into Best Buy as the media buttons are not working and the speaker icon is quivering with an annoying ringing sound. Best Buy said the diagnostic test shows the Toshiba thinks it has eight processors (which it dosn't) and its looking for them. I saw this perticular model on Costco's recall list but I purchased mine from Best Buy. I only had enough money to buy 'one' extended warranty so I put it on the Sony as it was going with my daughter to collage. I think it's a lemon.

 

[Guest]

My Satellite P-750 has been going through a similar problem since I got it, I've managed to trace it back to the OEM OS, System32. All my sysrep diagnostics and chkdsk seem to be reporting that's the problem, but there doesn't seem to be any consistency as to when it decides to seppuku itself... I had a clean (non OEM) version of windows installed on it for awhile and nothing went wrong, but without the OEM half the laptop's features don't work.
I'm still working on my spare time to find out why the OS decides to self-destruct whenever it feels like it, but for now I have my ODD replaced with a secondary drive dedicated to backups, and I backup routinely, as a complete system image appears to be the only way to recover from this fatal error; the sysrep disk is helpless and even chkdsk doesn't seem to do anything at all.
If your laptop doesn't have any fancy buttons on it or unique drivers, I'd suggest getting a completely new version of windows on it after resetting to factory defaults in the BIOS.

 

[Brett928S2]

This topic has been closed by Brett928S2