I am having some odd problems with my Toshiba laptop. For the last two days, it has not loaded past the boot screen for hours, if at all. When I force the laptop off and switch it back on, it goes to the Preparing Automatic Repair process but will not complete the process and go to the desktop.

However, this only happens when the battery is plugged in. When I remove the battery and run the laptop on power, it works without issue. Would this be a battery issue (given it works without the battery) or a hard drive issue (given it won't get past the boot screen)? If neither, what would you suggest as a solution?