Drive Controller Bad?

riggsb · 21 Oct 2013

Working on a Toshiba Satellite P775 that got an error on boot causing it to run the system repair which failed. It was left alone for a little while and then booted fine but was extremely slow (20 min to open a window once logged in). Did some troubleshooting and thought it was corrupt file on the hard drive so I replaced the hard drive with a Samsung SSD 840EVO. Installed windows and all was going well. Rebooted after installing a few drivers and I got the system repair again but it booted anyways and all the drivers I had installed were gone. I reinstalled the drivers and rebooted and it went into an infinite system repair loop. I have no idea what else to do to determine what the cause is. I suspect the drive controller is bad but I am not sure how or if there is a way to test it. I am currently reinstalling windows and it seems to be working for now but it is not done installing yet.

ICIT2LOL · 21 Oct 2013

Hello and welcome riggs mate certainly sounds like a controller problem when / if you get to the updates try them in small batches. If all goes well I would install the Samsung Magician and go in and have a look at the drive see if the firmware and suchlike is up to date.

essenbe · 22 Oct 2013

Hello riggsb, and welcome to Seven Forums. I really only have one question. The reason you installed the SSD was because you were having trouble with the Original hard drive as I understand it. Now the SSD is having issues too. Would that not suggest your problems are not with the hard drive/SSD but lie somewhere else?

riggsb · 22 Oct 2013

Yes it would suggest that it is not the hard drive which is why I am asking if it could be the drive controller or if there is something else someone would suspect. I ended up doing another clean install and found that the problem this time appears to be the Toshiba System Driver I was attempting to install. I installed only it after several successful reboots on a clean instal and it caused the system repair to happen which was successful in rolling back the update I tried. So I installed other drivers one by one rebooting each time I had no issues (did not try system driver again). I also got all windows updates installed and it appears to be running fine for now. I am hoping I just had two separate problems that caused the same reaction. The previous hard drive had a bad block (256 mb per block in HD tune). It was also running extremely slow which the new ssd is not doing. Hoping the problem is gone for good and not just waiting to occur again!

TVeblen · 23 Oct 2013

One other thought would be a bad SATA data cable, or poor cable connection on either end. Check the connections and/or try another cable.

ICIT2LOL · 23 Oct 2013

Sorry late reply now the SSD I thought was the problem - my error andswapping the HDD in is a straight forward process as seen here http://www.irisvista.com/tech/laptops/Toshiba-Satellite-P755-P755D-P750-P750D/disassemble-P755-1.htmand to my knowledge having done a few Toshiba's doing that has never been aproblem.

What I might suggest is to reinstall the drivers from the Toshiba site tomake sure you have the right machine you must know the PART NO see pic becauseit denotes for what region the machine was made for and is intended being usedin. Now if that does not work then you might have to use the https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/219487-clean-reinstall-factory-oem-windows-7-a.htmland activate with the machines code on the sticker after you have any data onit to external.
Drivers & Software Support | Toshiba