Toshiba laptop fun #2

Continuing from Toshiba laptop fun, as an experiment, I took another 2.5" sata hard drive from a Dell laptop (with O.S.) and it booted up and the mouse and keyboard worked! So, the problem exists on the hard drive and its not hardware related. I took the original hard drive and scanned it for viruses and found a couple, nothing earth shattering, put it back in and the same results, a useless laptop. For safety sake (and data retention) I cloned the hard drive to another (same size 120Gb, also sata, a 3.5 though) hard drive so I could experiment further with no data loss. If my next move doesn't work, I can just clone back the other (3.5" to 2.5")way and I'm back at step 1.

I then took the extra step of using Window XP to delete the partitions (yes, plural, many computers come with 2 partitions, one hidden so the manufacturer can keep their secret stuff away from you) on the drive then made 1 partition and formatted that. Extra work maybe, but no trace of a virus could linger and no prior problems could exist. A clean slate to start with.

After all this screwing around, down to business. Using the restore disks (most people lose these) I went through the restore procedure and chose the original configuration (like the day it was bought) and let it do it's thing. I won't bore you with the details, just yes I agree, blah, blah ,blah.

And. It. Worked! The system boots up fine and the mouse and keyboard are responsive. In retrospect, it would have been easier if I had one of those flashy thingies from "Men in Black" but in effect, that's kind of what I did, it just took longer.

Devices and/or software used in this article are: SIIG Cool Dual SATA to USB 2.0 Docking Station, Inland SATA/IDE Combo Drive Adapter USB 2.0 and Seagate Diskwizard (comes with a Seagate hard drive) software.

Toshiba laptop fun

Started looking at a Toshiba laptop for a friend of mine. It boots up and goes to the desktop just fine except that the mouse and keyboard are unresponsive. I plugged in a mouse to the USB port and no change. I restarted (the on/off key works) and booted into safe with the same results. For those of you playing at home I'd like to point out that during boot time the keyboard seems to work (F8). Hmmmm! Who doesn't like a puzzle? Stay tuned, I'll get to the bottom of this. Toshiba laptop fun #2