Tom's Hardware > Forum > Laptops & Notebooks > General Laptops & Notebooks > Need bad help with my Laptop
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ThanhSon85   09-17-2007 at 08:38:22 PM

Hello Everybody,

First of all, as a new member of this forum, I would like to say that I'm pleased to meet you all. Hopefully, this will be the best learning source for me.
The next and most important thing, is that I have something to ask for your help. Actually I am a student, and my studying is currently so tense, that I don't have time to search for relating topics, I just need some advises. I have a Toshiba Satellite A80 Laptop Computer, Intel Celeron 1.4 Ghz, 256 MB of RAM and 40 GB hard disk. I know that this is pretty out of fashion nowadays, but it has been my best Assistant in Studying.I have been keeping it well-organized and optimized. Last week, when I tried to install PowerISO and Microsoft Office, a serious problem occur.
When I reboot the laptop, there is only one line saying that:
"missing operating system"
I learned that this is because of Hard Disk Failure, or either the MBR is damaged.
Thus I put some WinXP CD to format the disks (I was unable to do different things). The formatting was good. But when I try to reinstall the Windows, is said that it couldn't copy some important system files to the Laptop's Drive. One more thing is that my DVD Rom Drive is very selective. So I want to ask:
1. Is it because of the Hard Disk is broken?
2. If it is not, is it because of the DVD Rom Drive. And is it possible to replace it with a new Drive?
3. Is there possibilities that the Lens of the Drive is dirty? If so, can I clean with with a cloth?

Thanks everybody for helping me.

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Bronze Laptops badge lostandwandering   09-17-2007 at 08:47:04 PM
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1. It is most likely the HDD. <----you can replace this as well.
2. Yes, you would just have to remove a few screws and find a drive with the correct interface.
3. They make Drive cleaning CD's but that won't help since you need to run the included program. If you have a micro-fiber cloth or one made to clean eye-glasses, you may be ok.

Was the HDD making any strange noises before this problem occured or was it performing differently? In my experience, you'll get some type of warning before it fails.

------------------------------ LAPTOP: Sager NP5760|T7200|2gb DDR2-667| 100gb 7200rpm HDD| 512mb 7950GTX|17'' WUXGA

Desktop: Core2 E7200 | Corsair 2gb DDR2-800 | Gigabyte EP35-DS3L | 250gb Seagate Barracuda | MSI GTX260 (192 SP) | Corsair VX550 | Antec 300 case
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ThanhSon85   09-18-2007 at 04:24:20 PM
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Thanks a lot for your advise. The hard disk didn't make any symptom at all. As I previously said, I always keep my laptop well-organized, and sometimes I deleted some registry keys, or delete some specified folders in the Windows folder in order to make some free spaces. I guess this may be one cause. Before corrupted, I installed Microsoft Office and when prompted to restart the system, the message appeared. I guess I have to do some hardware troubleshooting, after all.
Thanks again for answering me, lostandwandering.

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