Laptop not booting after the battery died during sleep mode.

Britton30 said:

It sounds like the power loss borked the boot manager. If you run the Toshiba recovery with the F2 or F12 it will remove the data you have and reset it too Out Of Box Experience (OOBE). Other that that you can see if Best Buy has another trick, but those guys usually just do a new install and your data is still gone.

I'll ask for some more help.

Thanks for helping redirect my anxiety into trying to fix this. I appreciate the help you offered.

Britton30 said:

You're welcome. Greg's troubleshooting steps can find many issues and help, let us know how it goes.

Well per step 3 of Greg's link I created a disc and usb version of the Windows Defender Offline. When I attempt to get them to boot on my laptop, I am first greeted with a black screen with 4 aqua/blue squares (in a windows pattern) that stays for a while and then a circular status indicator that makes a revolution or two before the screen goes black (unlit) and then black (lit) with no pointer or anything. At no point did I see either of the screens that were supposed to show up per Greg's post (although to be fair it is 2 years old so I wouldn't be surprised if it's changed). Any ideas?

gregrocker said:

Everything is here that can be done for Troubleshooting Windows 7 Failure to Start
including the hardware tests which I would do, leading up to if necessary rescuiing your files to restore your Toshiba laptop to its factory fresh software condition using system recovery Factory Recovery or getting the superior Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7.

In the future in Power Options keep Hibernate set to kick in after a sleep period so that if it loses battery power it will write RAM to the HD and shut down (suspend) in an orderly fashion rather than just cutting power to the RAM>

And as always never run the corrupt OEM factory preinstall which throttles and interferes with Win7 so you never get to experience it's native perfect state. That's why tech enthusiasts all do the Clean Reinstall.

So I followed your troubleshooting link and downloaded Windows Defender Offline. I tried it on a CD and flash drive and both times, I get the initial loading screen of WDO (it's a bit different now than the pics you posted in that guide) but then it flashes to a black screen with nothing at all. Any ideas where I can go from here?

Use one of the other bootable AV's in the tutorial. FREE Bootable AntiVirus Rescue CDs Download List

gregrocker said:

Use one of the other bootable AV's in the tutorial. FREE Bootable AntiVirus Rescue CDs Download List

That's what I get for not reading the next line. My apologies.

So bitdefender rescue cd ended up working but it found nothing. I shut down the computer, set the HD to be first in the boot lineup in BIOS and restarted my computer to get this message:

Intel UNDI, PXE-2.1 (build 082)
Copyright (C) 1997-2000 Intel Corporation

This Product is covered by one or more of the following patents: (lists a bunch of them that I'm going to skip unless relevant)

Realtek PCI Express Fast Ethernet Controller SEries v1.15 (090224)
PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable
PXE0-M0F: Exiting PXE ROM.
No bootable device-insert boot disc and press any key.

Google seems to suggest that those with this problem have a bad hard drive. Thoughts?

Yes, it sounds like it. If you enter BIOS setup is the HD detected under storage devices?

If not then you can try reinstalling it if you want to see if its a bad connection. Google should provide a video for the model, if not the series, showing how.

Of course if you're still within a year of purchase you should call tech support to have them RMA the drive after confirming the failure.

You can confirm it yourself if it's detected by running the HD tests given in the beginning of the Troubleshooting Windows 7 Failure to Start tutorial.

gregrocker said:

Yes, it sounds like it. If you enter BIOS setup is the HD detected under storage devices?

If not then you can try reinstalling it if you want to see if its a bad connection. Google should provide a video for the model, if not the series, showing how.

Of course if you're still within a year of purchase you should call tech support to have them RMA the drive after confirming the failure.

You can confirm it yourself if it's detected by running the HD tests given in the beginning of the Troubleshooting Windows 7 Failure to Start tutorial.

The HD is showing. After a fleeting moment of hope that a strand of hair near the connections of the HD was causing the issue, nothing has changed after reinstalling it. The laptop is a solid 3 years old so that is a no go. I'll go ahead and run the HD test but assuming it is trashed, is there anything I can do to recover those files or is it pretty much done for?

gregrocker said:

Yes, it sounds like it. If you enter BIOS setup is the HD detected under storage devices?

If not then you can try reinstalling it if you want to see if its a bad connection. Google should provide a video for the model, if not the series, showing how.

Of course if you're still within a year of purchase you should call tech support to have them RMA the drive after confirming the failure.

You can confirm it yourself if it's detected by running the HD tests given in the beginning of the Troubleshooting Windows 7 Failure to Start tutorial.

Apparently the test for the HD (Hitachi) doesn't support the intel chipset so I can't get it to work properly. It asks for the SN of the drive and has a spot for me to enter up to 10 numbers but the SN of my drive is 21 numbers so that is a no go.

gregrocker said:

Everything is here that can be done for Troubleshooting Windows 7 Failure to Start
including the hardware tests which I would do, leading up to if necessary rescuiing your files to restore your Toshiba laptop to its factory fresh software condition using system recovery Factory Recovery or getting the superior Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7.

In the future in Power Options keep Hibernate set to kick in after a sleep period so that if it loses battery power it will write RAM to the HD and shut down (suspend) in an orderly fashion rather than just cutting power to the RAM>

And as always never run the corrupt OEM factory preinstall which throttles and interferes with Win7 so you never get to experience it's native perfect state. That's why tech enthusiasts all do the Clean Reinstall.

It is best to use Hybrid sleep to insure a power loss during sleep does not lose the current Windows session.
With Hybrid sleep the session is saved to RAM and to the Hard Drive (hiberfil.sys file) whenever the computer goes to sleep.

i.e.
If a PC is set to sleep after 30 minutes and set to Hibernate after 60 minutes:
If it does NOT use Hybrid sleep, the session will be lost if the computer is sleeping and the power goes out.
If the power goes out it will not be able to save the session to the Hard Drive (Hibernate) - it's too late.