# Toshiba Satellite Boot Problem



## coover (Jan 10, 2003)

A friends Toshiba Satellite P25-S5092 is failing to boot, Blue Screening with a "c0000218 Registry File Failure" error message. It is pretty clear his registry is messed up. I tried to boot it going to a previously good configuration, but that didn't work. Safe mode, of course, doesn't work either.



I wanted to back up the hard drive before going any further, and loaded an Acronis True Image Boot Disk into the CD/DVD drive. The boot bypassed the CD and attempted to load Windows. I opened Setup and made sure that the CD/DVD drive was the first boot option and tried again. Windows attempted to open. An internet search suggested that perhaps I should hold down the "c" key until the word "Toshiba" appeared on the screen. I did that, and again it was back to Windows. 



I have also attempted to boot with a Windows XP Pro disk, Windows XP Pro SP2 Slipstream disk, and a Linux Boot Disk. These all fail and the computer attempts to boot to Windows. 



Any suggestions? Thanks .


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## Triple6 (Dec 26, 2002)

Do you know if the drive works? Or did work? Does the laptop have a floppy drive? Try removing/disabling every boot item except for the CD drive.


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## coover (Jan 10, 2003)

Thanks, Triple6. The machine does not have a floppy drive, and I am not sure if the CD drive works. It does, however, spin the CD, and the owner of the machine says that the CD worked prior to the "crash" that caused him to bring the machine to me. 

The BIOS will not allow me to remove any of the boot items, but disabling is possible. I'll try that and see what happens. I'll report back later.


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## coover (Jan 10, 2003)

I have now disabled all boot options except the CD Rom. Attempting to boot to a boot CD, I get the following error message ...

Media test failure, check cable
Exiting PXEROM

I do not have access to an external CD ROM or I would try that.


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## Triple6 (Dec 26, 2002)

Does the BIOS show the CD-ROM as being detected? Or does it show at post?


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## coover (Jan 10, 2003)

The Toshiba Splash Screen evidently covers up the screen showing detected drives. Is there a way to disable the Splash?


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## Triple6 (Dec 26, 2002)

ECS or TAB clears most of those screens. There may also be an option in the BIOS to disable it or disabled quiet boot.


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## coover (Jan 10, 2003)

I was able to disable "Quiet Boot" in the BIOS. The CD ROM was recognized and yet the computer will not boot from any boot cd.


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## coover (Jan 10, 2003)

I have been able to borrow a USB Floppy Drive and inserted a Win ME boot disk. It booted to the disk and I instructed it to load the CD ROM drivers. It loaded the drivers and told me the CD drive was "D". I changed the directory to D and then instructed it to "run". Error message "Not ready reading drive D" and giving me a choice to Abort, Retry, or Fail.


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## Triple6 (Dec 26, 2002)

Sounds like the drive is faulty.


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## coover (Jan 10, 2003)

Thanks again, Triple6. 

That evidently is (one of) the problem(s). Perhaps whatever messed up the registry also messed up the CD Drive - a power surge, possibly?. It's a shame because I have no way to troubleshoot what could be a fairly simple problem.


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## Triple6 (Dec 26, 2002)

If you had another laptop you could swap drives, the fronts may be different by the drive may be a regular slim type drive.


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