Toshiba L305-S5957 won't boot from CD

[GTIMESTWO]

I am very new to this, so please excuse what may be some obvious questions. I downloaded the data recovery software Knoppix 5.1.1 and burned to CD (at 48x - the only option that appeared). When boot from the Toshiba begins, error message appears:
Can't find KNOPPIX filesystem, sorry.
Dropping you to a (very limited) shell.

I tried the four options from tips/tricks including the testcd. It always give me the same message. The Toshiba is running Vista. I have searched the forum for similar issues and I am trying to recover any data possible from the hard drive before I reformat and send it back to Toshiba...it is still under factory warranty.

Any help you can provide would be appreciated!

[krishna.murphy]

I am very new to this, so please excuse what may be some obvious questions. I downloaded the data recovery software Knoppix 5.1.1 and burned to CD (at 48x - the only option that appeared). When boot from the Toshiba begins, error message appears:
Can't find KNOPPIX filesystem, sorry.
Dropping you to a (very limited) shell.

I tried the four options from tips/tricks including the testcd. It always give me the same message. The Toshiba is running Vista. I have searched the forum for similar issues and I am trying to recover any data possible from the hard drive before I reformat and send it back to Toshiba...it is still under factory warranty.

Any help you can provide would be appreciated!

I think this may be a bad burn on the disk (very common.) Try re-burning without the Windows Explorer running (ctrl-alt-del, run Task Mnager, click Processes, then Explorer-End Task, then start the program you use to burn disks on the Programs tab.) This is reported to make burning problems vanish (YMMV.) Let us know how it goes, and have fun.

Cheers!
krishna

[winxpuser50]

I don't know if this is a Toshiba problem or not....I just purchased a LIVE Knoppix CD to reboot my Toshiba L-35 S2161 to try to boot up WinXP and it wouldn't boot from the disc. i have done everything as advised - setting the bios to boot from CD, and nothing works. I hear the disc starting to run a bit but I get the same old safe mode etc. screen that i got before and it proceeds to the same blue screen error of "unmountable boot volume" just like before. The CD doesn't do any further action. It seems to me that my machine cannot read this disc. So, mine isn't a burn, or a download, it's from a vendor. The disc looks okay, no smudges or scratches and I know my drive works because I watched a movie on it about a week ago. So, maybe it's my system. Since another person here has a Toshiba and can't get a Knoppix CD to work on it I thought I'd share my problems just in case there's a further situation than a bad burn. Thanks for any help...I'm at my wits end and if this won't work will probably end up having to pull the drive and put it in a drive enclosure to rescue data and put it onto a new drive. I don't want to do that if I can avoid it but so far, no luck with anything...........thanks!

[krishna.murphy]

Sounds like a problem with the disk to me; even commercial product can be flawed enough to prevent booting in a particular drive. Try invoking the boot menu instead of depending on the boot-order setting; or, use an external CD/DVD drive, or put the disk in another system. If you can get it to boot in another drive, you can install it on a thumb drive or an SDcard (borrowed from a friend, or even a camera?) from/with that drive/system, then boot up from flash on the first system. Once you can get Knoppix to boot, it's often possible to repair a broken Windoze partition, or at least rescue the data.

Hope that helps!
Krishna

[Harry Kuhman]

There seem to be two (potentially related) problems in the same thread here. GTIMESTWO, you didn't say what burning software you used, but a high speed burn is almost certainly the cause of your problem. My advice is to find an alternate burning package that will do a low speed burn. The low speed burn is even more important than the option to do a verification pass. Also, be sure not to skip the md5 check, and be sure that you are burning the iso as an image and not just copying the iso file to a CD.

Winxpuser50, you bought a disc; I'm not sure where nor do I care. I do suspect that someone selling discs does not take the extra time to do a high quality low speed burn. You might be able to resolve your problem just by downloading and burning your own copy at low speed. I would also suggest downloading a different version than the disc that you bought, just in case there is some version related issue. When that works you can download the iso for the version you already bought, burn that, and determine if there was a problem with the version or just with the media.

[winxpuser50]

thanks for the info about the disc...it well could be the slow vs. fast burn problem, but unfortunately I don't have access to another system to burn discs. I asked a tech friend of mine to burn a Win XP boot disc but he refused saying he didn't want to potentially mess up my system, as he apparently had one time when he burned a disc for a friend that was a bad download. I feel he has the right not to want to do that so I didn't push it. I don't want to borrow a relative's computer to burn a disc either, for the same reason, don't want to mess up their system or settings, so burning discs is not an option for me. If it had been I would have made a Win XP boot disc at the get go when my computer stopped working rather than buying a disc. Whatever the cause, the Knoppix disc did not work, and I tend to agree that it's the disc and not my CD drive that's at fault. At CNET forum they said they'd used Knoppix to boot many Toshibas over the years so they didn't think it was an incompatability issue between my machine and the disc. I have the latest version of knoppix. So, it seems my only solution now is to pull the drive and transfer the data to a new drive. I'm out of ideas. The bottom line was of course to rescue my data and I still want to do that and will try to do that. I'm not blaming Knoppix at all, just trying to figure this out. I tried booting up in all kinds of ways....a cold boot with the CD in the drive, setting it to start CD first in the bios, starting and restarting..etc. It simply won't boot up the system from the disc. It was interesting to me that I did note a couple of smudges on the disc (small from fingerprints) which I wiped off....whoever handled it in packaging wasn't being particularly careful to hold it properly as I do with all my own CD's...I cleaned it and it made no difference so it's something more than a smudge or two preventing the disc from being read. Thanks again...if anyone has further info, it would be appreciated!

[krishna.murphy]

Maybe the tech who is hesitant to burn an XP disk can make a Knoppix disk for you? Or perhaps test it on his machine; presumably he will know that there's no risk in just booting it up. If it will boot there, then you can type in:

knoppix testcd
or
knoppix testdvd

and that will tell what's going on at that level. Certain disks (probably from the lower tier of mfgr.s!) are only readable and/or only bootable on premium drives, in my experience.

Cheers!
Krishna