The laptop itself isn't mine. It belongs to someone else. He wanted me to look at it because of problems he was having with it.
The original issue was that the laptop had a password on it. Windows XP Pro is what was installed on the system and it had a login screen and it would not allow him access in cause he didn't know the password. I did tell him to remove the battery and put it back in, thinking it would reset it, but at the time I didn't know it was a login password. Either way, it didn't really cause any issues cause of that.
The next thing we tried was installing a new operating system on it, but to do that, he had to boot from the CD. He first tried the boot options, around four of them, and none of them would allow him to boot from the CD, same thing happened and he got to the Windows login screen. I told him to try to get into BIOS and rearrange it so that it booted from the CD Drive first. I guess I was not specific enough because I don't know what he did, but after that, it displayed an "operating system not found".
I had him bring the laptop to me so I could look at it. I knew I had to get into the BIOS but didn't know how to, so I had to read up about it. The only keys that do anything is Esc and F12. F12 brings up the Boot Menu, which is now devoid of all choices except Enter Setup, which it won't let me do. F2 is supposed to bring up Setup, but that doesn't work.
Esc does bring up what may be the BIOS, or starting to load it anyway. The screen starts displaying some information on the computer, such as how much storage or RAM is on it, among a few other things. Once it gets to the part about detecting a mouse, or a mouse port or something, it stops and goes to the "operating system not found". Once I tried holding down F10 and this caused it to beep rapidly until I turned it off.
It did beep in other occasions as well, like when I had a CD in the drive or even when I did nothing to it at all except leave it on. The beeps are high-pitched and, unlike the rapid beeping, are separated from each other in approx 14 second intervals.
I did attempt to boot from another device. I went into Boot Menu and pressed the numbers. Even though there were no options, I thought that maybe the comp would still recognize a selection. The computer started turning off after that. It would remain on for a few seconds before just shutting off. Not so bad now, but for a while it wouldn't even turn on long enough to see the logo screen.
Anyone know what's going on with this machine? Here's the type of laptop it is: Toshiba Satellite A70-S249.