Completely dead laptop

[ericboo]

My mother-in-laws Toshiba Satellite does not power on at all and most of the time even the cpu fan does not turn on. It just quit working one day. I can see the power and battery lights turn on when I try and turn the computer on, but that is all I get.

I tried disconnecting the battery and power cord for 30 seconds like Toshiba suggested but that did not help.

It is out of warranty by a couple of months.:frown:

Any ideas of things to try before sending it in to a service center?

 

[igowerf]

That sucks. I got a 3 year warranty with my laptop to make sure it'll be under warranty for its lifespan. I know that Dell has some great support forums where tons of users have experience dealing with just about every problem. Perhaps there's something similar for Toshiba.

 

[Paperlantern]

see its not COMPLETELY dead, theres still hope the baord is getting power, you say lights come on, but form the sounds of itmore than likely the cpu is out on it, if its model where the board is attached to the cpu, your screwed... the whole board will have to be replaced... but, maybe not it could also be ram, flip the laptop over and take the ram cover off. there might be 2 peices, try removing one and turning it on again, if still nothing, put that one back and remove the other and repeat. if still nothing, give it a shot with no sticks in (might have some on board ram). if still nothing, try booting with ac power ONLY, no battery (if batteries fall below a certain charge they can prevent booting), if thats been tried, or if it doesnt work... try removing the HDD if its on a caddy, sometimes on toshibas jsut a couple screws hold it in, or a clip, and you can slide it out, if not... it depends how far you want to go.... let me know what happens if you try that stuff, maybe we can go further

 

[ericboo]

I will try what you suggested. I did try without the battery and just off the AC adapter. I believe it is only one DIMM, but I will check into it.

It is my mother-in-law's laptop so I am trying to save her a few bucks if I can.

The more I am reading, I find out that these models are subject to overheating issues. Nice to know. It will cost $90 to diagnose by a service repair center, and then the actual repair.

Anyone have any links to any lawsuits?

 

[DurocShark]

I wonder if the fan died or got disconnected... Since it's outta warranty anyway, pop it apart. Check the fan, and see if you can look at the cpu with the heatsink off. (Don't break anything doing that... If it's easy do it.) Look for signs of overheating, discoloration of cpu or other components, etc. Check all cables, wires, plugs, etc.

GL.

 

[Paperlantern]

$90!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHOA! we dont charge that much, we charge $45 for diagnostic... whos so special they need $90 to diagnose a laptop? Plus we wont charge anything extra for labor, only parts or additional services (microcomponent or software). Should ship it to me to fix, lol, but the shipping will cost you 20, but still cheaper i guess...

anywayz, hope it works for ya

 

[ericboo]

Paperlantern,

I am calling her now to tell her to drop it with me first before taking it in for repair. I would like to try a few of the things you suggested. I know $90 is a lot for diagnostic.

If you have any other ideas I am willing to listen.

 

[Paperlantern]

wlel i dont for now, but i'm pretty good at this stuff myself, and i have 2 technicians at my disposal that i can ask as well... try waht i suggested, if it surfaces any new information, relay it over and we'll take it from there, i hope we can get it fixed

=)

 

[jschuk]

Mind telling us what model Satellite it is? $90 doesn't sound too bad for New York City. I am sure the $90 is reflecting the cost of living. By the way, when was the exact date of expiration, Toshiba typically has a 30 day grace period.

 

[ericboo]

It is a 1805-S254 1GHZ P3.

Is this possible? I took out the battery and plugged it into the wall, did not work. I tried a swap with another SODIMM I had laying around and that did not help. I then dedided to put the original SODIMM in the empty slot and to my amazement, it powered on and is in Windows!!!!!!!

What can I assume from this? I am going to try and mess with it but why would filling the 2nd DIMM slot fix it?

 

[Paperlantern]

The slot that the dimm was in is bad, the board needs ram on it to boot, without it, it stays dead, the ram was there, but the slot went bad, change the slot, board says "hello, ive got ram, i can function" plain and simple... congratulations, you diagnosed and solved the problem! only draw back is now you basically only have one dimm slot. Its a common problem, in sonys, dells, and toshibas... havnt seen it happen in HP's yet, or fujitsus. KDS has a nasty habbit of messing up the slot that the modem/lan card sits in... but thats about it =)

 

[gwlam12]

wow, nice work! i plan on getting a laptop soon. hope i can count on paperlantern to help me out if any problems occur

 

[ericboo]

Happened again after the computer was running all day. I will try and take the primary DIMM out. I am also getting hard drive errors. Put the hard drive in a desktop and XP did not recognize it. Norton said there was a major problem with the partition and fixed it, but I had to leave before it booted back into Windows.

Is it possible that the hard drive is bad and it won't power on without a hard drive either? I realize that memory problems may lead to data errors.

I have to fix this now as she needs it back.

 

[Paperlantern]

you should run PC DR on that thing, i have a bootable image of a floppy with pc dr on it, PM me and i can send it to you, it should help determine the problem

 

[jschuk]

You have two memory slots on that machine, try running it with the memory in each slot. I have yet to see a slot on a 1800/5 series go bad, unless it has been dropped or damaged in some way. I really haven't seen much memory go bad either. Make sure you have the latest BIOS on that unit, should be version 2.1 (has to be 1.8 or higher to prevent shutdown problems). That computer doesn't need a HDD to power on, but it will sit at the Toshiba screen for a long time if you have no HDD or defective drive in there. I recommend IBM's (Hitachi) Drive Fitness Test for HDD diagnosing.

 

[ericboo]

I popped out a DIMM and am trying it that way. The darn disk is no longer bootable and DFT shows it as unrecognized format. I ran a quick Drive Fitness Test and it checks out ok, and am running the Advanced Test now.

I need to see if I can recover 8GB or more of digital photos. Is there any DOS-based software for recovering the partition without spending hundreds? This is even worse when my own hard drive up and died the other day.

Argh!

 

[Paperlantern]

Try a utility called Drivemaster 2000, i have it if you cant find it anyplace

 

[ericboo]

I can't find Drivemaster 2000. Can I get if form you? I PM'ed you yesterday with my email add.

Thanks for you help.

 

[ericboo]

I ran Ontrack's DOS utility, R-studio and Getdataback and none could find any recoverable files or folders.

Considering there is no readable partition, I would assume data recovery is not an option?

I would just like to commend Toshiba for making a laptop series that is known to have overheating issues and which in my eyes, caused these problems.:disgust:

 

[jschuk]

Winternal's Disk Commander is pretty good at recovering partitions, but it is a $300 program. Don't blame Toshiba for your HDD problems. From Toshiba

A countermeasure was taken against a problem that caused some CPU's of the 1805-S273 (those with a CPU 1GHz) to have problems when they reached shut down temperature. This was due to an inconsistent power consumption of the CPU, even if the CPU temperature was controlled.

The overheating is partly Toshiba's fault and partly Intel's due to Toshiba not recognizing the characteristics of the CPU's they were using. The only HDD failures that I have seen a higher than normal amount of is with the 20GB Hitachi drives. Shame on Toshiba for using such a crappy drive, actually Hitachi for making a crappy drive. Of course Sony loves Hitachi, and I have seen a few of them in cheaper Compaqs and IBMs.