Skip to main content
Question Closed

Does the Hard drive need to be replaced?

A friend wanted me to take a look at their Toshiba Satellite U305-S7446 computer. I found that every attempt to boot from the hard drive resulted in a grey screen. I booted off of a disc and it appears to work perfectly fine. Is there anything I can do further to check if this is a bad hard drive? Thanks!

Update: Using the Ubuntu boot disc I was able to access information on the Hard Drive, as well as specific files, so it must be a boot issue. I have access to the boot folder through the disc. What should I do to fix this issue?

Answered! View the answer I have this problem too

Is this a good question?

Score 0
2 Comments

What operating system are they trying to boot into? Ubuntu or Windows or other? If they are trying to boot into Ubuntu then maybe there is an issue with grub. Does the grey screen display any error message or is it just a blank screen? If you are trying to boot into Ubuntu then I would use the live install disc to try and get grub repaired or reinstalled. You may also want to check the bios settings if you can access it.

by

Thanks for the swift response! The user was trying to boot into windows vista. I had made an Ubuntu boot disk so I tried that first.

by

Add a comment

1 Answer

Chosen Solution

Recover what data you need, then try reformatting the drive and use the "write zeros" option to map out any bad blocks on the drive.

Was this answer helpful?

Score 1

3 Comments:

I have saved as much data as I can, I will reformat the drive tomorrow and see how that goes. Thank you so much for the help.

by

I reformatted the drive, but when I tried Windows Vista installation it got about halfway through unpacking files, and then said that the installation was cancelled, with error code 0x8007045D. The message stated that, "windows cannot install required files. Make sure all files for installation are available, and restart the installation." When I boot up the machine, it says that BootMGR is missing. Is this part of the problem?

by

Additional information:

I was booting off of a Windows Vista ISO Install disk, could that have not been created properly?

by

Add a comment
View Statistics:

Past 24 Hours: 0

Past 7 Days: 0

Past 30 Days: 0

All Time: 258