General Technology & Troubleshooting Topics

[#1]

Hello All,

               I have a Toshiba Satellite A105-S361 series laptop. A week ago it had a virus and I thought to backup the data on the disk and reinstall that. I plugged out the HDD from laptop and plugged that into a SATA USB Interface to backup the data on my desktop and formatted the disk on my desktop using windows disk management services( I have windows XP on desktop).

Then I plugged the disk back into the laptop and inserted the recovery DVD (which has Windows XP home) and switched on the laptop while pressing 'C' key so as it could install it back to factory default.

A blank screen shows up displaying "Checking boot CD room". It runs for some 20 mins, the DVD ROM's light blinks and I can hear the CD revolving sound like its reading the CD, but after 20 mins it displays the error "No bootable CD found in ATAPI CD-ROM" and a cursor blinks on the screen.

I have tried other bootable cds, a couple containing windows XP and one containing WIndows Vista but same result for all. I have tried to change the boot sequence from BIOS and the F12 technique to display boot menu...

Any help

Regards,

Talha

[#2]

If the disks work in other systems it sounds like either the drive is dirty or is failing.  Try using compressed air to blow it out or a CD/DVD Lens Cleaner Disk to see if that helps.  If it doesn't it will probably need to be replaced.

[#3]

Well I have already cleaned the lens of the CD ROM. In fact this is the very first thing I did, it's a DVD-RW in good condition.

Tell me one more thing, is there a possibility that I could make a bootable USB and boot the system with the help of that, i.e. I copy the contents of the DVD Recovery in USB and boot the system with the help of that.

I did make an MS-DOS bootable USB but then found that the BIOS has no option to boot from a USB device. It only boots from one of HDD,FDD, CR-ROM or LAN. Or do I need to update BIOS first, if there is an updated version available for the A105-S361 series, to boot it from a USB device.

Thanks,

Talha

[#4]

Any further help on this, my issue is still unresolved?