Laptop help needed

[Adam67]

 
 Hi
 
 I've just inherited a Toshiba satellite c660 laptop but it's come with a problem. I was told that he thought that he'd fried the hard drive , after checking I found there wasn't one in it so I bought a new hard drive thinking I could just load windows xp onto it - no problem - ha.

 It started to load off the disc then it stopped and a blue screen came up - tried a couple of more times including a usb stick all with no joy but I did catch what came up.

 'Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware problem. Could not read from selected boot disc , check boot path and disc hardware.
 Please check the windows documentation about hardware disc configuration and your hardware reference manuals for additional information.'

 I've got no idea about what to start looking for / at , or even where to start , can someone please help? 

It's supposed to be an upgrade from my old laptop which is a Toshiba satellite sp4600 and as I only use it for diagnostic work on cars I thought I was onto a good thing.

 Thanks , Adam

[DaveLembke]

What size HDD did you install into it? I was looking at the specs and found the HDD size limitation caught my eye. So if the HDD is larger than 640GB it might not be supported.

Toshiba C660 Full Specifications
CPU: Intel® Core™ i3, Intel® Pentium, Intel® Celeron, AMD® Athlon™ II Dual Core, AMD® V series
Microsoft® Windows 7 Home Basic (32-bit) or Premium (64-bit) on Satellite C660, Microsoft® Windows 7 Professional on Satellite Pro C660
RAM: up to 8 GB DDR3 (1066 MHz)
2.5″ HDD (5,400 rpm) up to 640 GB
39.6cm (15,6”) TruBrite® LED HD display (16:9), 1,366 x 768 pixels, 200 cd/m2; Satellite Pro C660 also available with non-reflective display
GPU: latest integrated graphics
2 x USB 2.0, Multi-Card Reader, Fast Ethernet
WLAN (802.11 b/g/n), Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
10-digit numeric keypad, Touch Pad with Multi-Touch Control
starting at 2.54 kg
Dimensions: 380.5 mm x 254 mm x 28.0 mm (front) / 35.6 mm (back)
DVD-Super Multi drive (Double Layer)
Toshiba Media Controller, Toshiba LifeSpace
VGA Web Camera with Face Recognition, microphone

[soybean]

If you can get your hands on a Linux OS Live CD, you can put the CD in the DVD drive, start the computer and boot from the LiveCD.  In other words, you would be running the Linux OS from your DVD drive.  This can be a way of confirming the computer is operable.  This can be done with no hard drive installed in the computer; the computer will run entirely from the OS on the LiveCD. 

A light weight Linux OS for this purpose is Puppy Linux.  You can download it from http://puppylinux.org/main/Overview%20and%20Getting%20Started.htm. 

[Computer_Commando]

Tell us more about this "new" hard drive.  It sounds like it has a problem.

I don't think the 640GB is s hardware limitation, sounds like that's the largest one available from Toshiba at the time.
Linux probably won't work with his diagnostic car work.

[Adam67]

 Hi , It was bought brand new ( from eclipse computers ) and it's a 320Gb Toshiba MQ01AB 5400RPM 2.5 SATA Hard Disk Drive , I only want the laptop as an up grade to the I'm using at the moment for car diagnostic work.

 Thanks , Adam

[Kurtiskain]

Try obtaining a new disk image for your XP edition. I am assuming you used the same media to create the USB drive and could be causing this issue.

I have seen bad RAM cause this issue too.

[strollin]

Hi , It was bought brand new ( from eclipse computers ) and it's a 320Gb Toshiba MQ01AB 5400RPM 2.5 SATA Hard Disk Drive , I only want the laptop as an up grade to the I'm using at the moment for car diagnostic work.

 Thanks , Adam

XP does not have drivers for SATA controllers which is why you are getting the BSOD.  Go into the BIOS and ensure that the SATA mode is set to IDE and not AHCI.

[Kurtiskain]

I had of thought this too but if this were the case... Windows XP Setup would say that there are no drives in the machine, or provide the INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE 0x7B BSOD code instead of the error provided.

There is a MSKB article on the error you get here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314477/en