Laptop won't POST!

[howste]

Hi folks, I have a laptop that is acting more like a boat anchor. When I turn it on, I can hear the hard drive spin up, but that's the only indication that anything is going on. I've checked for loose connections, swapped out memory, hooked it up to an external monitor to see if the display was fried, etc.

BTW, I don't know the history of this computer - it was brought to me in this condition. After I tried everything I could to revive it, the owner told me I could keep it. It's a Toshiba Tecra 8100.

Oh, one more thing. When I power it off, it does a loooong series of high pitched beeps before it shuts down.

Anybody have any ideas? TIA

[adamnb1]

Hey man,
~Try looking up Toshiba Beep codes, they usually go during POST, but you never know.
~try reseating the Battery, even when using a Power adapter, it there is not a battery, or a bad connection, etc, strange things can happen.
~If you can use a friends, or go to a store and try out a Docking station, that would be good, just slide your laptop into it, this change in hardware might trigger somthing, try an external monitor in the docking station.
~Your display still could be fried though, most times its an integrated card with a port for an external one, so its the same card wheather you useing a Ext. monitor or not.
~if you have a floppy drive, does it Light up on power on? if it does then your system is booting and your display has problems.
If it does not light, your system is being haulted during POST, inwhich case I would try reseating/swapping any peice of hardware I could,

[howste]

Thanks for the input. I have tried it with and without the battery. I've reseated everything I could possibly get to, including memory, keyboard, modem, hard drive, CPU, display connectors, etc. Unfortunately, I don't have a docking station available to try.

I went to Toshiba's website today, and it looks like it may still be under warranty. I called tech support, and after waiting for over 45 minutes to talk to a real person, I gave up. I'll try again some time when hopefully they'll be less busy...

[tiffin]

Hi,

I'm having exactly the same problem - did you find out how to fix it? I've had this problem before, ages ago - and I seem to remeber I had to reset it, but I've tried that, and I'm obviously missing some vital little thing..

Cheers,

Tiff

[howste]

I went to the Toshiba website and found out that the laptop was still under warranty. They gave me the address & phone of a local shop that did warranty work for Toshiba and they replaced the motherboard for free. Now it works great. Try Toshiba's website and hopefully you'll find the same thing.

Good luck!

[tiffin]

just tried switching it on again - and it worked! v bizarre. Can't see how it could be overheating, because it had been left all night before I tried turning it on the first time. Have read that the DIMM slots were badly soldered on a lot of the 8100s, and have a tendency to fail (1 already did a month or so ago. took a 256 chip with it too. I hate laptops)

*sigh* this is why I left support.