Notebook Won't Boot

I have a trusty old Toshiba 4260 which I use for most of my on-line work.

Unfortunately a few days ago the notebook won't boot. The hard drive and Win XP SP2 are OK since I can insert the h.d. into another 4260 and it boots fine.

When I power up the lights on the notebook begin to flicker (as usual) and I can hear the h.d. being accessed, but after a second nothing more happens and the PC just sits there.

I see nothing on the display (and there are no beeps), nor when I try to plug in an external monitor. I don't even see the Toshiba splash screen, nor can I access/see the BIOS page.

If I insert a bootable floppy, nothing happens - and if I insert a bootable CD ROM (eg Win XP CD) you can hear the CD drive being accessed but again nothing happens and the PC just sits there.

I suspect the BIOS isn't working properly, but I'm note sure why and more importantly how to fix this problem. Is there some key combination or 'reset' button that will reset the BIOS and get it working again.

Hope someone can point me in the right direction.

 

Hello Gemo,

Have you tried booting into the BIOS? On a Dell Desktop its tapping the Delete key while booting up, on a Toshiba Latop I don't know what the procedure is.

Another way is to take the CMOS battery out for a period of time. Again I don't know how that would work on a Laptop.

Regards - Charles

 

Good question Charles and thanks for the reply.

I've tried to get into the BIOS settings (as I remember the BIOS is accessed by hitting ESC (or F1 or F2 ?) at power on) so far without success - in other words nothing happens (nothing shows up on the screen). I'll play around with this more tonight to confirm but I suspect that some problem on my PC isn't allowing BIOS to recognize the key strokes.

I agree with your idea about resetting the CMOS by temporarily disconnecting the CMOS battery, but I'm not sure how to access this battery (may need to pry open the case and have a closer look see...).

Any other ideas...?

 

Hi Gemo,

My only other idea is to take the HD and attach it to another system as a slave drive to see if its readable at all.

So depends on whether you can remove the drive and whether you can connect to another system. The only way I can think of doing that is with a drive enclosure for 2.5" drives that connects via USB.

Regards - Charles

 

Last resort option ..
How to update the BIOS See page bottom for install instructions ....

You can download the BIOS file from this same page. Do a page search for 4260. If you can't find it, here is a direct link.
Satellite Pro 4260-4270-4280-4290-4310-4320-4330-4340-4360-4380
Don't know if you will be able to do this since you can't access floppy, HD, or optical drives. Could this possible involve the IDE controller /drivers/corrupted BIOS?
Please understand Gemo, their are risk in the above suggestions. If the floppy does copy the BIOS file, but the install goes bad ... the computer could be damaged.

 

When you turn on your computer does the monter display anything at all??

If not your bios chip is dead. And there is a few options to fix that.

1. Get a new computer
2. See if you computer has a removable bios chip and buy a new one
3. Buy a new motherboard

The bios chip is the first program to start on ur computer. It runs around your computer and checks to see if it is hooked up to anything.

Anyway Goodluck

 

another possibility...

Could the display have died on the laptop? Does it show anything at all? From your first post I got the impression that nothing shows on the screen at all. If this is true, it could be the LCD. Good luck. HTH

B

 

Its highly unlikely that this is the source of your problem(s). Unfortunately, the symptoms you have described could be caused by so many different things, its tough to know where to start. Display, backlight, powerboard, AC plug connector, motherboard, capacitor - one could make a very long list of possible culprits but your BIOS isn't even going to make the top ten unless there's something you aren't telling us. My recommendation would be to ship it off to a specialized laptop repair facility where they will give you an analysis of the problem and a repair estimate for a fixed price. Do not take this to an ordinary technician. You can expect to pay $75 plus shipping to find out whats wrong and whether or not its worth fixing. Quite a few laptop repair specialists will not charge you for that anaylsis if they wind up doing the repairs. Good Luck.

 

There is no signal coming from the graphics adapter (by my reckoning if it cannot run a secondary monitor).

The information about accessing the CMOS battery should be in the User Guide/Manual (to save you opening it up first). On one I saw (Toshiba I think) it was situated under the RAM modules.

Matt

 

Thanks for all the suggestions.

I took out the h.d. and installed it in an external USB enclosure and I can see all the files - also I installed the h.d. in another similar notebook and it boots OK from the drive so I'm sure the h.d. is good.

I'm sure it c/b many things that are causing this (I even swapped out the power supply to make sure it wasn't at fault) but the symptoms are that there is something wrong with the BIOS... In the first few seconds the PC starts to boot, accesses the h.d. and then it just stops, as though the BIOS instructions end there.

Any ways I took the smart way out and bought myself a new notebook (Acer) for around $500 and if lasts as long as my Toshiba 4260 I'll be happy.