Toshiba Satellite Recovery 10-FC12-0017 Error
Posted on August 5, 2010
Recently I was fixing a Toshiba Satellite laptop and everything appeared to be fine. All it needed was the OS reinstalled.
The first thing I always check is the hard drive for bad sectors. Fedora (Red Hat’s testing OS) Linux live CD has an easy disk package that will show you everything you need to know about the hard drive. In this case the hard drive had a few bad sectors. Normally this is not a problem. Most OS can install around the bad sectors.
However Toshiba’s recovery disk, maps the original image to the hard drive. This means that the OS has no choice but to install on the original sectors. So you stick the disk in go through the whole process and then at the very end you get the 10-FC12-0017 Error with no explanation except you need to restart the computer.
Now at this point you have a couple of options.
- Give it the ol college try and do the whole thing again. There is a very very good chance you will get the same error. But for those who need to know, give it a try. But before you do, change the boot order in the BIOS. Usually by pressing the F2 key at during the boot process. Then move the CD/DVD to the top of the list and exit and save.
- If you are not really looking to by a new hard drive. You can do it the hard way. Find Windows disk that is the same flavor that your COA covers. i.e. Vista Home Basic, Windows XP Home, etc. And install the OS from the non-Toshiba recovery disk. Then you will need to download all the drives an install them yourself. When you are done you will only have the OS installed. All the application that came with you computer will not be install. You will have to download them on your own and find a disk.
- A long shot but it might work. When you are going through the recovery process. Choice custom partition and split the drive in half. So if you have 320GB drive make the C: partition 160GB. In the event the bad sectors are on the other side of the drive, the recovery process should work. Then you can format the other partition ( the one without the OS) and use it for extra space.
- If that does not work and you want to give Linux a try you can probably install Ubuntu flavor of Linux with out too much effort. (It’s faster and easier than installing windows) Linux has really come a long way over the last 3 or 4 years. It looks just like windows, with two major differences. The first is it’s free and more secure and the second is that it will install on a disk with bad sectors.
- Lastly and probably the best option is just get a new drive, they are pretty cheap when compared to the time it will take for options 1, 2 and 3 then use the Toshiba Recovery Disk to restore the new drive to the original factory state. When choosing a new drive you need to wiegh your options;
- Speed – 5400 RPM, 7200 RPM or SSD drives. For the single window user that really just plays around, you could get away with a 5400rpm drive or if you are on a really tight budget. If you have many windows open at one time and store lots of stuff on the drive and you need speed, the SSD drives are the fastest drives. A 7200 rpm is the same speed as the typical desktop drives and would suit most average computer users.
- Size – Bigger is not always better, if you need 500GB of space then you better make sure you have a running backup. Trying to save 300-400GB of music, pictures and data is very very time consuming. The average user can get away with a smaller drive.
- Brand – Typically I go with the brand that is offering the best warranty.
- Also don’t throw that old drive away. It’s still good for storage. You can get a hard drive enclosure and use your old drive to backup your stuff. Most drives will run for many years, even with bad sectors.
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