[RESOLVED] Satellite A70 gets errors during loading new hard drive

[idophotography]

I'm having an issue with my Toshiba Satellite A70 running XP home 60 Gb HDD 2 Gb Ram.
My hard drive was giving me trouble and so I tried the restore disk, which loads about 70% and then gives Error# 1507 bad file record signature.
I bought a 160 Gb hard drive and new DVD Rom and tried to run the Toshiba Restore disk again with the same results.
I tried loading Windows XP Home from my desktop machine but only get to where it says a file could not be loaded retry or skip.
When I hit retry it won't accept it, and when I hit skip it soon has more and more files that can't be loaded.

I've tried loading Windows 2000 and get no further. Does anyone have any suggestions for me?

I exchanged the Hard Drive and DVD rom again with the same results.

[equinoxe3d]

Maybe it's your RAM going bad and giving errors. I suggest getting Memtest86+ and run it overnight. If it gives errors (red rows) it means your RAM is bad and will need to be replaced.

[idophotography]

I removed my RAM and tried it with just the onboard RAM with the same result
I don't think I can load any program without an operating system on my hard drive

[jimbo1763]

So you did not try Memtest86+?

You can run it without having Windows loaded. The website will give you instructions for running it from a CD or from a floppy.

[DanceMan]

I removed my RAM and tried it with just the onboard RAM with the same result

Did you run Memtest?

What do you mean by "onboard ram"? Current laptops (netbooks aside) have two ram slots. On some the first slot is under the keyboard instead of under a cover on the bottom.

[DanceMan]

Explanatory note:

Memtest 86+ is not run from Windows. It runs with its own bootable OS, from a floppy or cd drive. Ubuntu cd's contain it among their boot options, if you have one. Best way is to download and burn the Ultimate Boot CD. It contains Memtest and all the hard drive manufacturer test utilities and a lot more. It's free.

[idophotography]

I tried Memtest and also Ubuntu but I can't load these. I get the message:

"NTLDR is missing"

What should I do?
Also, I don't know where the second memory slot is on my A70.

[Midknyte]

"NTLDR is missing"

Did you make sure to set the boot order to CD first?

Also, I don't know where the second memory slot is on my A70.

As Danceman said, it's probably under the keyboard. Did you check?

[jimbo1763]

The Crucial website indicates that there is one memory slot and 512 Mb of memory that is non-removeable.

Quote:
# Maximum Memory: 1536MB
# Slots: 1 (1 bank of 1)
# Standard Memory: 512, 768, or 1024MB (512MB non-removable)
# USB Support: 2.x Compliant

[idophotography]

The boot order is CD first.

Thanks Jimbo. As I had said earlier, I removed the 1Gb memory and tried running with the non-removable memory with no success.

So to recap where I'm at:

I can partially load windows XP and the Toshiba recovery disc, but both stop.
Windows has trouble loading certain files and asks if I want to retry or skip. It gets far enough to do a complete format prior to it loading files.
The recovery disk gets to about 70 percent and gives the error # 1507 bad file record signature.
Any other disk I try to load gives me the message: NTDLR is missing.
This happens with both new 160 Gb HDD, and 2 different new DVD ROM Drives I've tried, and also the original 60 Gb HDD.

Where do I go from here?

[jimbo1763]

You may have answered this already-but run Memtest 86+ with only the on board RAM and see if it comes up with any errors.

I do not run into on board RAM very much. I wonder if there is a way to disable it in the BIOS, in the event the test shows that there is a problem with it.

[idophotography]

Ok. I've finally got memtest to load. With the extended 1Gb Ram all I get is errors and zeros under the good column.

Then I took out the RAm module and ran memtest with the on board RAM only. I am still getting tons of errors 262,000 and counting although the Good column had something other than zeros for test #1, but all zeros for test #2

Now what?

[Midknyte]

You should get ZERO errors from memtest.

If it's bad onboard ram, you're stuck. You cannot disable the onboard ram. Time for a new motherboard or system.

[idophotography]

OK,
Thank you everbody for your help!