HELP!..BIOS Issues with an Toshiba M45 laptop, Won"t boot up and can't get into setup

[El Tigre]

Picked up this laptop on Ebay and it hangs on the Toshiba splash screen and won't boot up or go into setup. 1.4 GHz Pentium, 1 GB RAM 80 GB Toshiba HDD

I have tried pulling the RAM one stick at a time and or in different slots even different RAM. doesn't make any difference.

I have had a couple of other Toshiba lappys and have never seen this before there is like a progress bar at the bottom under the Toshiba logo. this thing hangs up at around 70 percent on the progress bar. After messing with the keys a while I hit the escape key and the following message popped up.


Phoenix cME FirstBIOS Notebook Pro
Copyright 1985-2003 Phoenix Technologies Ltd.
All Rights Reserved

BIOS Version 1.50

FOR EVALUATION ONLY. NOT FOR RESALE.
Build Time: 08/11/05 19:27:40
ATI RU400MB+SB400 Evaluation Board (Goldfish)
CPU= Intel ® Pentium ® M processor 1400 MHz
639K System RAM Passed
958M Extended RAM Passed
1024 Cache SRAM Passed
System BIOS shadowed
Video BIOS shadowed
Fixed Disk 0: Toshiba MK8026GAX
ATAPI CD-ROM MATSHITADVD-RAM UJ-840S
Mouse initialized
System Configuration Data updated


Press <F2> to enter SETUP

When you hit F2 nothing happens

Any Ideas?

 

[Matt1970]

Take the hard drive out and see what happens. If that doesn't do it try the DVD. Defective drives can hang the system.

 

[El Tigre]

I did remove the hard drive but didn't think to remove the DVD. I will try that tonight.

Have you ever seen that bit about Evaluation only on any other BIOS? Makes me wonder if someone flashed this BIOS and something went wrong possibly.

 

[imagoon]

Does that laptop actually have a serial number. It might be an engineering sample. Something like the laptops that Anandtech gets to eval. That or someone repaired it with an engineering sample motherboard.

 

[El Tigre]

Does that laptop actually have a serial number. It might be an engineering sample. Something like the laptops that Anandtech gets to eval. That or someone repaired it with an engineering sample motherboard.

I'll have to take a look, seems to me it did but i really didn't pay a lot of attention to it. I didn't have a whole lot of time to fool around with it last night.

I'm pretty sure the screen was taken apart at some point, so a different motherboard is a possibility.

 

[El Tigre]

Imagoon

Laptop does have a serial number. Pulled the DVD, HDD RAM in each and every combination still the same result. Even went so far as to disassemble it and remove the cmos battery for a while. Put it back together still no go. Looks like it may be a paperweight. LOL

While i had it open i took some pix of the motherboard numbers but they were not very clear then i forgot to write them down DOH! Some other day when I have some time I will crack the case again and pull the numbers.

Thanks for your input

 

[imagoon]

From what you have done I would suspect the MB is bad. Going from memory (been a long time) you could hold insert and it would clear the system settings. Sometimes that would let it boot again. It was a sign of a low battery / failing board.