Toshiba Laptop won't start

[imported_Driller]

I am helping a charity group who were donated a Toshiba Satellite 1415-S105 laptop. It would not start up on battery nor with the AC adaptor. On the AC adaptor, the power light comes up green and if the battery is installed, the battery charging light comes on (yellow). When using the start button with either a short click or holding it down for a 10 second count, the drive light flashes for less than 1 second, and the power light goes to a yellow flashing light. Nothing else - no sequnce of keystrokes - will change that. Only removing the power source for a few seconds stops it. When the battery is not installed, the exact same thing happens except without the battery charge light. I've tried leaving it on in the (apparent) charge mode overnight, but no change. I bought a new AC adapter but get no change. I am stumped. I assume this is not related to the pwer but must be a bad HDD? I have tried using a WinXP CD in the CD/DVD drive to boot from but get no different reactions than before (I think perhaps the boot from CD setting is probably not at the top of the list and I can't get to the BIOS because of the no-start).

Any ideas?

 

[imported_Driller]

Bump

 

[corkyg]

Those sysmptoms are the same as those indicating the CPU needs reseating.

 

[Slikkster]

I'd tend to think you have a huge dust buildup in the heat sink of this thing. It's a common reason for non-starts and mysterious shutdowns. If nothing else, it's worthwhile to investigate and clean out the laptop to rule it out. Get your self a couple of cans of compressed air with the plastic straws and get ready for a dust-a-thon.


Here's a nice pictorial on disassembly of your series:

http://irisvista.com/tech/laptops/Toshiba1415/sat1415_1.htm

Note that the site above details on how to do a complete teardown. You may or may not have to do all steps in the order given to access the heatsink/cpu. In other words, you'll see instructions on removal of the DVD player and floppy, etc., but that might not be necessary to access the heat sink/cpu.


Given that you will have the machine opened up, you might as well give the cpu a fresh coat of good thermal paste (not too thick!) and reseat it.