Need help recovering hdd on my toshiba laptop

[ace7454]

I have a Toshiba Satellite Pro C850-14D that I want to factory reset because I get a black screen with a cursor every time I turn it on.

I've tried holding 0 and turning it on but that didn't work so when I turn it on I press F12 and go down to HDD Recovery, press enter, then choose yes but after I choose yes it just takes me to the 'Starting Windows' screen.

Any way to fix this so I can factory reset my laptop ??

 

[Skyl3r]

Hello ace7454,

First of all, if you want to recover data, you may want to look into booting from a Live Distribution of linux (go for something with an easy interface, like Ubuntu if you are unfamiliar with Linux.)
There you can plug in a flash drive or external storage unit and attempt to copy over data from your HDD.


After you have done this (if you choose to) you have several options. If your HDD is corrupt, it's possible you won't be able to access the backup partition. If this is the case, you will need to use the CD that came with your laptop upon purchasing (if there's two, it'll be labeled as "Recovery" or "Windows 7" or something similar.)
You will have to press F12 or F10 and select Boot Options and choose to boot from the CD. If there is no option like this, you may enter your BIOS settings and set the Boot order of your system to boot from CD before HDD.
After this, it should be pretty straight forward to follow the on screen instructions.


If you do not have this CD, you will need a Windows 7 CD that correlates with the windows 7 version you had (Windows 7 Home Edition 32-bit OEM, Windows 7 Professional 64-bit OEM, etc.) then you can boot to that CD and install it. When asked for a key, there will be a sticker on your laptop that contains the key you need to enter. Assuming you used the right version of windows, this should fly with no problems (And this is entirely legal!)

 

[ESPclipse]

What skyl3r suggests is good if you want a fresh restart, but you may be able to fix your original problem (i.e. the whole not booting into Windows thing) by repairing the MBR. Perhaps the easiest way to do this is with another PC and some USB to SATA adapter (which are cheap online), but if you only have a laptop on hand, then you can try to repair the MBR with a Windows install disc or by booting to a Linux live installer iso. If you want to try any of these options, let me know.