I came back from a nice weekend away to find a Toshiba laptop awaiting me for repair. The problem was simply, the service pack 1 install failed and making laptop to boot loop.
When booting up Windows, The "Windows is loading files" loader appears, then a pop up says that the start up repair option is trying to find the OS. After a few seconds, I get this message "Windows cannot repair this computer automatically". So, I selected an option just below that which says "View advanced options for system recovery and support". This allows me to select the keyboard input type, which I select the UK method.
After selecting this, I get this error message "You must log in to access System Recovery Options.....". At this point, it should ask for a user and password, it does not. I press OK to restart and back to square 1.
The next thing I did to press F8 on boot to access the repair your computer option. This was still the same error message!
The other option I had was to boot from a Windows 7 cd for repair. Selected language and such at first and selected the Repair your computer option. From this, it searches for the OS on the HDD, it detects as Windows 7 so I press next on there. After this, I see all the options to start up repair, system restore and such. I decided to select system restore! It found 1 system restore which I needed to help the laptop boot again, so I selected it. Now I have another pop up message saying "You must always restore the drive that contains Windows. Restoring other drivers is optional". System restore is now useless.
I tried to do a startup repair, no joy! chkdsk in cmd, no joy!
Some forums say that to press and hold the zero button is access the Toshiba utility to restore Windows. This does not work!
I have tried Hirens CD Boot to make the computer boot and such but NOPE!
I could just re-install Windows from a Windows 7 disk. However, I need some product keys for Microsoft Office and some others. I know that Hirens CD does not have this sort of software to find this out.
Any ideas how to fix this laptop? Or to just get the products keys off for a refresh installation?
Thanks
