Solved! Toshiba Satellite - no boot no bios

[angusgg]

I got a Toshiba Satellite in trade for some phone repairs. It was working fine, but then I did a full system reset and disk clean through the windows 10 reset menu. It went through the process but when it turned back on it had a black screen with a blinking underscore cursor (image 1).

I tried restarting it, using a new hard drive, booting with only one stick of ram, booting without the wireless card all with the same result. I also tried booting without a hard drive, in which case I got a screen with an error saying no bootable device. (Image 2)

What else can I try? Or is the laptop just trash now. Would be kinda a bummer, but not the end of the world.

Edit: I have tried pressing del, f1, f2, f8, f10, and esc on startup. It won’t go to bios and won’t safe boot. I have also tried ctrl + alt + del from the dark screen screen (image 1). It seems to restart the laptop, but then goes back to the same screen.

1

2

 

[Saga Lout]

Remove the hard disk and slave it to another PC to see what's wrong with the disk or the system on it.

Start off by running Checkdisk using chkdsk /r and see if the disk has a problem that process might fix.

 

[angusgg]

Remove the hard disk and slave it to another PC to see what's wrong with the disk or the system on it.

Start off by running Checkdisk using chkdsk /r and see if the disk has a problem that process might fix.

Thanks, I did that and the disk is fine. I used diskpart to clean and reformat the hdd. Now when I put it in the laptop I get this screen

I tried plugging in a windows 10 install usb but still the same things. Won’t let me go into bios to change boot priority.

 

[Saga Lout]

You'e got to be quick to get into BIOS.

Try Escape, Delete and Fn2 and if they all fail, try Fn12 to make a once-only chaange of Boot option.

 

[angusgg]

You'e got to be quick to get into BIOS.

Try Escape, Delete and Fn2 and if they all fail, try Fn12 to make a once-only chaange of Boot option.

I removed the cmos battery, laptop battery and charger and let it sit for 15 mins. I put the laptop battery and charger back and turned it on spamming esc. I super briefly got a Toshiba logo and ‘press f2 for bios’ screen, but it quickly went to “no cmos detected” screen.

I put the cmos battery back in and turned it on, and only got the black screen with blinking cursor again, was not able to acces bios or boot options still.

Could it possibly just be a bad cmos battery?

UPDATE: I got into bios after taking cmos and laptop batteries out and power cable out, letting sit for 15 min and then replacing all.
I changed the boot order so that my USB windows install was first boot priority, but after exiting bios it went to the same black screen with blinking cursor!

 

[Saga Lout]

Your dud CMOS battery theory sounds good if it can't last for those few seconds when you were nearly there. It's either that or the USB drive isn't bootable and I'm sure you've taken care of that.

 

[jaybenjamincohen]

It also could be a bad USB port. I have a C655 and when I searched the forum, I found at least one other case where both USB ports went kaput at the same time, mine and the other person's.

 

[angusgg]

It turns out that it was a combination of two things.

1: my first issue was that the computer on power up went to a black screen with flashing cursor. This was because the CMOS battery needed to be replaced.

2: The second issue I had was after I got into bios and changed my Windows install USB to be the first boot device, it still went to the black screen. The solution to this was to put the windows install device as the first boot device, and move the hard drive to the bottom of the list.

TROUBLE SHOOTING STEPS for you to try:

1: remove cmos battery, laptop battery and power cord. Wait 15 minutes, replace all three, and try to enter bios - press power and spam f2
2: Replace the cmos battery
3: Test hard drive in another system and reformat using diskpart (https/m.windowscentral.com/how-clean-and-format-storage-drive-using-diskpart-windows-10), or if another computer is not available buy a cheap hard drive to try.

If any of these steps allow you to get into bios, NICE you are almost there! Make a Windows install USB (https/support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/15088/windows-10-create-installation-media), plug that in, go to the “boot” section of your bios, change your usb install device to the FIRST boot device on the list, and change your hard drive installed in your laptop to the LAST device on the list.

These are the steps that let me fix my Toshiba Satellite! I hope this helps someone!

I want to thank Saga Lout for all his help and suggestions.

 

[Saga Lout]

Congratulations; you nailed it!