General Technology & Troubleshooting Topics

[#1]

A friend gave me a Satellite A55 for my daughter. It was working for him until it started making a screeching noise.

I determined that to be the HDD - it stopped when I removed it!

Dropped in another HDD from an other laptop, but it won't boot. That drive is beleived OK but no way to be 100.00% on that.

The unit powers up normally and I have full access to the BIOS (no passsword set). I have tried to boot to a WIndows (full version bootable) CD from the boot screen, hotkey 'c', and from changing the boot order in the BIOS. The CD is known good, and the CD drive lights and spins up on power up. But it will not boot or give any indication that it is trying to read the drive. I have built lots of desktops, but thsi is my first dive into lappys. Still, by my reckoning, even if the HDD has issues, the CD should still boot up and attempt a Windows install. Booting straight to CD, or to HDD first I get a blinking cursor on a blank screen and after a minute or two a "disk error - Press any key to restart" message . The CDROM light does not come on - leading me to believe the laptop is still going straight to the hard drive in both instances.

What am I missing?

TIA

Edit: The Bios recognizes the hardware - the HDD as primary and the CDROM as secondary.

[#2]

When you turn the system on try hitting the F12 key to bring up the boot menu to see if you can change the boot order to CD/DVD.

[#3]

Thanks for the reply;

Affirmative, but same result. It does not attempt to read the DVD/CD, but jumps instantly to a blinking cursor, and the error message about a minute later ( I guess it times out).

Disk error

press any key to restart

On any key, it repeats the above scenario.

If I change the boot order (via BIOS) to LAN, it does attempt to boot via the network - but that doesn't do me any good.

Satellite A55-S326

[#4]

Will the drive read any other CDs?

Can the disks be read on a different computer?

Have you tried gently cleaning the disks under lukewarm running water and patting them dry with a clean soft cloth?

Are the disks scratched, smudged, or otherwise disfigured?

[#5]

Win2K, WinXP and Ultimate Boot Disc - all are readable on my desktop and appear to be bootable. I have removed and reinstalled the DVD/CD drive, and it lights on power up. or inserting a disc, and when opened the disc is spinning down. Note though, that when I select the CD drive to boot (at the F12 prompt) the CD drive light does NOT come on - leading me to believe the laptop doesn't actually seek the drive. I don't mind buying a new HDD for the machine, but if it won't boot from the CD, I won't be able to install an OS.