Hi and welcome to the Forum
Absolutely, the best thing to do is to
MAKE CERTAIN THAT YOU HAVE ALL YOUR PERSONAL DATA SAVED TO EXTERNAL MEDIA BEFORE ATTEMPTING ANY FURTHER REPAIRS IN ORDER TO AVOID IRRETRIEVABLE DATA LOSS!! This you already know from your past experience at trying to repair a broken XP computer, and you saw what happened there. There are several ways to do this, when your laptop is experiencing a what we call a "boot-loop" and you can't access your Windows desktop.
One really good way to go is to download the free
Ubuntu LiveCD boot disc and bypass windows completely and use a Linux OS to access the information on your W10 hard drive and backup to external media such as a USB external hard drive, flash drive, or Cloud Computer storage account (i.e. Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, or Dropbox). Here's the link to download the Ubuntu and make a boot disc:
How to create a bootable USB stick on Windows | Ubuntu As long as your problem doesn't stem from a hardware failure such as a failing or failed hard drive, the Ubuntu rescue method works quite reliably and I use it frequently to rescue Customers who bork their systems inadvertently or get hit by a nasty virus. I even carry one around on my keychain, which is rather handy when I get an emergency call and I don't have all my toolkits with me in my truck.
Next, I see this problem very frequently, as folks who upgraded to W10 during the 1 year free upgrade period (July 29 2015 - July 29 2016) upgraded their older computers from W7/W8x but didn't run the
Microsoft COMPATIBILITY TEST to see if their hardware, apps, or drivers had any issues with W10. The #1 problem I see in my repair shop are laptops and PCs that are running the upgrade just fine and stop and get stuck on the W10 repair screen as your did and can't boot. This is due to several different things, but the #1 reason on laptops is from a failing or failed hard drive. Since your hard drive had W8.1 on it, it's at least 3 years old. Modern laptops have hard drives that are only designed to last for 2 years no more!
This means that your hard drive is
HIGHLY LIKELY to be failing or have failed completely!
The only way to know if this is the case is to perform Hardware Testing on your laptop. There are 2 ways to do this:
(1.) Take it to your local Computer Pro or repair shop and pay someone to test it for you, and
(2.) DIY (Do It Yourself). If you decide to DIY, we can help you with that.
I wrote a very good Troubleshooting Guide that provides step-by-step instructions on how to test your own laptop hardware (works for PCs too). Here's the link:
Windows 10 - Unclickable Task Bar Getting the data backed up is your #1 task here as you already observed. Since this isn't done apparently, you need to handle that first. Once that's done you can work on data recovery. If you can't do it, or the Ubuntu method doesn't work, you could have a catastrophic drive failure on your hands. In this case you'll need to take it to a licensed Computer Tech in your area and pay him to do the data recovery first. If it works the Tech will give you your data back on DVD discs, USB flash drive, or a USB external hard drive. That's if he can get anything back at all. Depending on how badly the drive is damaged, the Tech may tell you he can't get it anything off of it since he can't read it with any of his equipment. He'll further tell you that it will need to be sent out to very very expensive professional data recovery. The last one of these I did in May of this year ran me
$550 US. So, the data you have on that drive needs to be very crucial and irrecoverable any other way such as personal or business Tax Returns, Family Photo Archives, etc.
What I usually suggest to my Customers in this situation, is to remove the drive from your laptop and set it aside (after all your other attempts at recovering data from it have failed) and purchase a brand new replacement hard drive from ebay, amazon, newegg, or other reputable online seller. Then do a W10 Clean Install from bootable media downloaded free from Microsoft website here:
Windows 10 This will provide you with the MCT tool which can create a bootable W10 install disk or usb drive with which to reinstall your W10 on your laptop. If you have factory Recovery Media
*Discs or USB* that came with your Toshiba laptop or that you made using the Toshiba Recovery Assistant, those are better.
This allows you to get your laptop running again, and time to reinstall all your programs and apps which you will have to do on a blank replacement hard drive you install yourself. The programs you installed after you purchased the laptop will not be recovered by any of the above methods. During the 2 weeks -3 months or so you are rebuilding your laptop (that's how long it takes me to do it), you can have your original hard drive in at your local repair shop for data recovery. Hopefully, your local Tech can get some or even most of your data back. This normally takes me 7-10 days. That's not too long to wait, as you'll be quite busy rebuilding your laptop, reinstalling programs, etc. If and when you get your data back on media from your local Tech, you can simply plug it into your laptop and copy it all back over. This can take a few days to find the right places to copy it back over to, or simply copy it all to a folder called
OLD DATA or similar. And organize it later. This allows the process to proceed in parallel, you can be ordering a new drive, installing W10, then programs, while your data recovery is being done on that set aside original hard drive. This process works very well for the majority of my customers.
This is probably more information than you asked for; but, if you brought it into my shop; this is exactly what I'd tell you to do. Several of our other volunteers here are also doing the same thing and have their own repair shops, they may advise you differently. So, you may get some additional input.
Main thing is, don't be afraid to ask questions along the way whether your are paying a pro to help you or just doing it DIY method. We are here 24x7x365 and are very good at responding back to you in a timely manner as best we can.
Best of luck,
<<<BIGBEARJEDI>>>
