Sorry havent been on in a while have been busy. Fn + f9 does nothing I'm afraid. A USB mouse works fine and the performance option for high is not available to me.

I'm near positive it could be a hard drive problem but before forking out for one and having to pass on the costs to the owner I just have to be sure. The noise is repeating like this : click clk,clk,clk,clk,clk,clk....click. This goes on and on for ages aswell..

Thanks in advance.

Clicking is a classic sign of [impending] hard disk failure, be it electrical or mechanical, and i'm gobsmacked people are suggesting what they're suggesting (pressing keyboard combos, or drivers to fix it).

Back up any data your friend values on it immediately and advise them to RMA it to the seller/manufacturer asap.

Edited by deleted (Sun 12-Aug-12 12:41:10)

Hi,

I had one of these toshiba's to repair about 2 months ago aswell. I can confirm that it is Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit. The problem was caused because the owner didn't know it was only a 30 day McAfee trial when they bought it from pcworld. A virus had damaged the boot sector on the hard drive, which meant the laptop couldn't read from it, and wasn't able to access the restore partition.

I ended up deleting all partitions and reformated the hard drive. Downloaded the digital version from Microsoft (the code on the bottom of the toshiba laptop works).
Installed the drivers from the toshiba website, and it fly's along with 2gb of ram.

Thanks RiffRaff I thought as much because it just isnt the normal clicking that I can hear its repeating over and over like it is searching then resetting. I think the laptop is out of warranty, so a replacement hard drive shouldnt be too much to pay. Maybe just stay away from Hitachi... Cheers.

This particular model? If so I'm going to politely suggest there is something wrong with the laptop hardware or the Windows 7 image that Toshiba are shipping and it wasn't a virus that caused this. Like I said I know 2 people with these laptops and both of them have given serious trouble right from the start.

Something is not quite right with these systems, somewhere...

In theory, you could be right about the image on the restore partition being duff. Because the one you repaired Pipexer, you say runs badly after you fixed it, and the one I repaired using the digital version of Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit goes like a rocket ship.