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No on changing SATA code. There is nothing in my bios setup that says anything about SATA.

No, there wasn't any file name it just said "Windows cannot initialize."

How did you setup the thumbdrive? You can't just put an ISO on a thumb drive and try to boot from it. Did you use unetbootin like I suggested? I would think that laptop should be able to boot a thumb drive no problem.

If you're really considering junking that laptop, and you're somewhere in the US, please send me an email.. indygunfreak at hotmail.com

As you said, the laptop is not that old, why not call Toshiba, and get a return authorization, and have them tell you what, if anything, is wrong with it.

I still think its either a bad CD/DVD drive, bad media, or a memory issue(but if its passing memtest, this seems unlikely).

IGF

Try booting by adding (edit) the boot line with:
no dma

I did download unetbootin and tried to install Slax with it. But it won't boot from the usb. I tried to install windows xp pro last night and it did the same as all other attempted installs. Towards the end it can't install certain files because it says they are not valid winxp files.

I'm going to replace the cd/dvd drive and see what happens.

Doug

This may not be your Laptop problem but it may.
I really hate to say this but. seems to me and this comes from hardware experience
symptom loads up but does not boot no swap file.
symptom loads up but stops before complete. no swap file.
sympton does not load at all. all three things say the cpu is not taking the page files from ram and putting it some where like a vurtial swap file. or an actual swap partion. all three mean the cpu is not working.
the cdrom drive works the hard drive works but for some reason the is no memory swap so when the ram is full and know where to go it stops it's full.
Bad cpu bad bios configure. any way it is a hardware issue. and every computer that came into my shop that had this problem could not pass the hardware test on the cpu.
this went with fan failure and over heating.
Most were AMD at the time but alot were Intel.
I used to use redhat 7 could load the whole system up buit never boot past a splash screen same for windows 98 and xp. bad CPU.
Dsl would never boot my toshiba it would crash from the boot it was a OS problem it did not have the drivers for my bridge.