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Toshiba Satellite Challenge
I have had a Toshiba Satellite 1805 since late 2001. Recently, I found it asking for a valid system disk... After a restart it was working fine, but I was fairly sure it was time for a new hard drive.
After upgrading hard drives from 20 to 40 GB (without upgrading/flashing toshiba's internal ROM chip that looks for compatible hardware) I have found that the problem may not have been entirely the hard drive.
The system started to lockup without warning; anywhere from seconds to hours after startup. Lockups like the screen suddenly freezes and nothing but the power button does ANYTHING. Even the hard drive light would no longer flash until the machine had been power dumped and restarted.
Then after a week or so of that problem, I restarted it one day and the power light came on but NOTHING happened. No fans, no noise, no hard drive, just the power light and the AC Light.
Nothing seemed to fix the problem... until I got frustrated and shook the machine. Then it powered up as normal the next time I pushed the power button.
Well as you might guess, shaking is no longer the cure that it once was... Now I've got just AC and Power (ON) lights but NO FUNCTION from anything.
I thought of a power supply problem, but the symptom remains the same with AC power or on (good) battery. The battery will also charge just fine and the associated light works as well. I thought of a RAM problem based on the Phantom Lockups, but that shouldn't prevent the system from starting up. I can't find/hear anything loose. It's almost as if something is blocking power from the entire system (after the Power On Light).
The system specs are:
Toshiba 1805-S254
P1000, 14", 256Mb, 20Gb, DVD, M/L
PN PS183U-00C50X
SN X1030206PU
Any thoughts or wisdom to share? I could use some help, my head hurts from trying to figure out this one on my own...
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