My Laptop has died

Just had a look myself MD, and the hard drive looks favourite at the mo. if you remove the hard drive and start the laptop and the noise is gone then it's confirmed. "PC & Laptop repair site"

You've probably lost everything on there if it is the hard drive (which is sounds like it is).
You can put a new drive in there though.

The magic word here, MD, is Toshiba. I have made my feelings about their laptops quite clear on here..

How long have you had it for? If it's longer than a month you've done well..

I can't investigate further at the moment as the clicking was annoying Mr Makybe.

Eh, who wears the trousers in your house?

I recently replaced a hard drive in a laptop.

Before it expired it kept showing a message that there was a problem with it, so I knew what to do.

I've got 2 Toshiba Laptops, on my older one it was easy as there was a cover specifically for the Hard Drive so just needed to undo one screw, on my current one I had to take the entire back off.

Thanks for the replies

Joel, if I can't bet back lost photos then it isn't worth spending any time or effort on it. I won't bother trying to get it going again if everything has been lost.

G2d, I must have had it a few years. At least 5 I would think, maybe longer.

Sacrebleu!

I'd call it a day and frame the fecker..

Dr Crippen, I have to agree with Mr Makybe, it was a very annoying noise.

I've just thought, MD, i bought mine around the same time. You must have got the bits that were'nt in mine..

I only really used it for windows live mail for work.

I'm not sure if I can have windows live mail on my iPad.

Quite possibly, g2d

Sad news MD. I'm sure that as soon as Kenny gets home from spoons he'll start a RIP thread.

I have sent Mr Makybe to bed abd I'm having a tinker with my laptop.

At the bottom of the screen under the Toshiba logo it said click f2 for help. I dud this and it said to wait.

The clicking has now stopped and something has come up on the screen that I have never seen before.

It looks very technical

It goes something like this

Phoenix securecore (tm) setup facility
Main    Secure.... Power management.....advanced....boot....exit

System time
System date

Cou type

Cpu speed

Odd hl-dt -stdvdram gt 30n

Etc etc

It us showing tidays date and the clock is running.

Does this mean that it is not completey dead

It's odd that it has stopped clicking.

Is it worth me trying anything before I send jt to laptop heaven.

I would actually like my photos and a load of things I have in my bookmarks

Excuse typos, I'm tired.

There is no icon to move around so I can't click on anything anyway

I can use the up and down arrows!

I did a few things and pressed

f10 thinking it would save everything and exit but it has gone back to the Toshiba screen and is clicking again.

I'm not giving up just yet but I'm too tired to do anymore right now.

I have to get up in the morning for work. I will try again tomorrow evening.

Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated

The computer is tying to boot from LAN because it is not seeing your hard drive as a bootable device. When you power your system on, tap the F12 key, this will bring up your boot menu. Do you see your hard drive listed there? If you do, then you need to go into the BIOS and go to your BOOT list and set your hard drive to boot first. If you don't see your hard drive in the boot options, then your drive failed and you will have to replace it.

Thanks eyeball, yes it is saying something about a wake-up signal from LAN!

I will try what you suggest

Haven't a clue what I'm doing here.

I have just changed everything from disabled to enabled.

It now says let the computer's power on by pressing any key, when PC is in sleep

Wish I was in sleep.

It's clicking again now and gone back to The Toshiba screen.

I might have another go tomorrow.

Thanks for the help everyone

if in doubt, throw it out.

I'd buy a caddy and stick the ailing hard drive in it and plug it into a port on another computer if you have one and see if you can retrieve your photos.

Your HD is effed...clicking means the read write heads are looking for data on your hard drive and not finding it so they do a kind of reset and go back to try again...usually this means your HD is only useful to those who will charge you thousands to recover the data from the platters. Hope this helps :-)

Thanks guys.

You can buy a replacement hd from cex for not very much
its not a difficult job to swap it out.

Thanks, Breedingmad.

It might be wirth doing that as a laptop is handy to have even tho' I only use the iPad. I could get my livemail account set up on it again.

Breedingmad  good stuff mate, sounds worth a try MD?.

It's a fairly simple job, but you will need to have a recovery disk to reinstall Windows again, some laptops come with them, others you need to burn them yourself...

Thanks.

Sounding a bit complicated now

If you have the disk (or disks) it should be fairly straightforward

Just bin the **** rubbish, MD.

And be extra nice to Mr MD on Saturday.

FFFFS

J A P J A P J A P. Stupid fackin yank braindead censorship. A pity ye dint think about that at Nagasaki and Hiroshima you yank bawbags........

"click of death". An 5 year laptop can be perfectly useable for general use.
I wouldn't bin it, even if you don't want it a computer refurb or ebay will take it.
Putting a new HD in and sticking a fresh install of windows on it is a perfectly simple job.
Some people reinstal windows all the time anyway.

I agree, my last Toshiba was about that old and was fine performance wise, just the fan had died and I couldn't be bothered fixing it so I bought a new one.

If you spend extra to get a SSD  you will notice it will be a lot faster too.

My MacBook died a few weeks ago,the "motherboard" is gone I was told eft, anyway decided I'd replace it with an iPad air ,not one of my brightest decisions ,feels like a kids toy

You can give it to me if you like.

Last two laptops that have died on me I have removed the hard drive and put them in a USB hard drive dock bought from PC World and been able to retrieve all the files.

Thanks Crisp!

I didn't know it could be as simple as that.

I have just found one on Amazon. It has brilliant reviews.

I will check it is compatible with my laptop and will order one.

It's only £20 so not the end of the world if it doesn't work.

I have an iPad Air, Padlock.

I think you had yours around the same time as I bought mine. I seem to remember you posting about it.

The only thing I have problems with is copying and pasting URLS. Such as youtube links onto here, for instance.

Other than that, I love it

Yes I think mine was around £20. Well worth it.

You will just need Mr MD to buy you a screwdriver set for Valentines

I have my own screwdriver, Crisp

That's ideal. You can have a good screw tomorrow then.

It's only £20 so not the end of the world if it doesn't work.

You could have bought a caddy for about £3 and done the same.

Crisp!

Ah, yes, FM, you suggested a caddy, but I don't have another computer.

Your old Hard Drive is probably 2.5" Sata, which can even be plugged (not live!) into a desktop to attempt to get data off it, or as FlowerMyth says, a caddy. What he means by this is a little box (make sure it's Sata version) that will take the drive and a USB lead so basically, caddy is just another name for an external drive that hasn't actually got a physical drive in it yet. All an external drive is is a normal drive stuck in a box (a caddy!).

The problem is if you problem IS the drive has failed and it's suffering the famous click of death, it may well just be completely useless anyway unless your are lucky and somehow the electrics are slightly different in the caddy or it's just your lucky day and it works for a bit enough to get data off, or, small chance your laptop had a failed HD controller.

Personally I'd work out it's just the drive that's broken and if the laptop is still fast enough for you, stick a new 2.5" drive in it and re-install windows. (Probably not an SSD though). If your old drive is still working a bit you can then try to recover anything you can salvage off it.

It's all Greek to me