Satellite recovery issues

[seprater]

I am trying to get a Toshiba Satellite 655-s5111 running again. It was Win 7 and I am going to install Win 8. It seems to not want to read the Win 8 disk, but will read the Win 7 recovery disk. the Win 8 disk seems to read fine in the other computer.

The Toshiba was dropped. One of the Ram slots was apparently damaged somehow because the computer would not restart unless the one slot was empty(I tried testing ram that was known to be good, same result). A few days later the original HDD is nearly dead. It has a lot of CRC errors. I am installing a new HDD, but the system wont start up with it installed. It is the same speed and size, but different manufacturer. it will recognize the drive if it is installed as a USB drive and if I force it to go to Bios when it is installed it recognizes that it is there. I don't think the new HDD is bad because I can hook it up to another computer and it seems to work just fine.

Any thought on how I can get it to recognize the HDD and Win 8 disk?

Thanks for any advice!
Seprater

 

[ex_bubblehead]

A dropped laptop is never a good thing, too many delicate pieces that will break. At the very least it sounds like it needs a new motherboard.

 

[seprater]

A dropped laptop is never a good thing, too many delicate pieces that will break. At the very least it sounds like it needs a new motherboard.

Thanks for responding.

I've been considering that as well. I would have went to that conclusion right away if the original hard drive didn't still try to work. It tries to load up windows but the errors on the HDD wont let it and the computer simply goes to a black screen with a blinking cursor in the top left corner if I try to start it with the new drive installed, even if I set the BIOS to boot from the optical drive first.