Help with Laptop

Question

Hello,
I have a Toshiba Satellite and my CD/DVD ROM drive no longer works. I bought this laptop about 2 years ago. I wanted to know what could I do to fix this issue?
The numbers on the botttom on my lpatop are as follows:
TOSHIBA SATELITTE A205-S5804 SYSTEM UNIT
MODEL NO SPAF3C-0NR00V
I was trying to reinstall the recovery disk, but my drive is not reading it al all. I bought an external DVD to try and boot Vista through the external device. I used a separate desktop to give power to the external drive, while plugging the USB part into my laptop.
Does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks!

Answer 1

OK, well, I have a rather long, complicated, and drawn out idea.
You'll need:
A computer running Windows that is connected to the internet.
A flash drive (1 GB or greater capacity) that you don't mind formatting
(optional) another external hard drive or flash drive to back data up with
Go to
http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/
and download the Windows version of Unetbootin
Now, plug your flash drive in, go to My Computer, right-click on the drive and click format. Format it to the FAT file system.
You probably want to remove any other non-critical pieces of external memory (again, this isn't essential)
Now, run Unetbootin.
In the Unetbootin window, there a way to select a distrebution of linux to download. I'd recommend Ubuntu.
Next, select the letter of your flash drive at the bottom of the window and click Start.
I'm writing this from memory, so you might have to do something else. But Unetbootin is REALLY simple to figure out.
Unetbootin will download the Unbuntu operating system and install it onto your flash drive. The download is about 700 MB, so this will probably take hours and render your internet connection nearly useless.
Once, Unetbootin has finished (I think it asks you to restart your system), eject the flash drive and plug it into your troublesome laptop.
You probably know how to edit the BIOS settings by now (if you don't, then you can keep reading, learn to edit them, and just boot off the recovery disk w/o the whole Ubuntu/Linux thing).
TO edit your BIOS settings, hit the key to enter the BIOS menu (F2 on must computers) repeatedly after pressing to power button to turn the computer on.
ONce in the BIOS menu, you have to navigate to the Boot Sequence page and move the USB (or Disk Drive option if you're trying to boot off the internal disk drive) option to the top of the list. Play with this list. You can't really screw it up beyond repair (just change it back if it doesn't work).
Save and exit the BIOS (usually by hitting F10)
Now, your computer will start off the flash drive (no changes are made to your computer). If you're prompted to, select the option of Booting without changing any settings (usually the default).
After about fifteen minutes, you should have the Ubuntu desktop running. You can put a disk into either your internal disk drive or your external one and see if it registers. If it does, then your reinstall disks could be bad or you could have some other problem.
You can use the linux disk to pull any files on your hard drive to a second flash drive by going to the places menu and opening your hard drive and a second flash drive that you've plugged in previously.
If all else fails and you like linux, you can install it to the hard drive so that it'll run at full speed. You might want to make sure that the sound works and that you can connect to a wireless network. There is a little icon on the top bar that you click on to see the wireless networks available.
I used linux for a couple of years without too many complaints. You're kind of at the "nothing to loose" point with your OS, so you could give it a shot. Just remember, its a different OS and will take a few days to learn. Don't get mad at it. There are some awesome forums avalable (google Ubuntu forums) if things get too bad.