crwdns2933423:0crwdne2933423:0
crwdns2918538:0crwdne2918538:0

crwdns2934243:0crwdne2934243:0 oldturkey03 crwdns2934247:0crwdne2934247:0

crwdns2947189:0crwdne2947189:0:

Toshiba Satellite M45 exhibits strange power/POST behavior.

crwdns2934249:0crwdne2934249:0:

Got this one handed to me in a dormant state - laptop hadn't been powered up in a while.   Charged the battery for 15 minutes, and proceeded to restore the hard drive to its factory state using the recovery DVD (for the first time - I had to break the case seal to use it).

During the first powerup for Windows, the laptop locks up when prompting for a user name.   Subsequent attempts to power down and up resulted in freezing at the Toshiba splash screen.  There was one 512MB memory chip and I changed its memory slot and changed the chip entirely.    There was no change in behavior.

I cleaned the heatsink, reseated the CPU, and replaced the hardened grease with Arctic Silver 5.   I removed the mPCI WiFi card.    I removed the battery and used AC power.

MHDD 4.6 essentially tested the hard drive to be good.  There weren't any sectors that were bad, but there was a pattern of slower sectors towards the end of the drive.   I also reseated the hard drive.

I flashed the BIOS from 1.70 to 2.00

I'm still getting lockups ... BUT ...

... they go away when I slap the laptop on the keyboard area.   I have yet to slap the underside, but I'll probably start doing that instead ...

... unless I can figure out whether there's a link between what I'm seeing and a possible issue with a bad ground on the motherboard.

Any thoughts?

Thanks for reading!

crwdns2866306:0crwdne2866306:0:

Toshiba Satellite M45

crwdns2915684:0crwdne2915684:0:

open

crwdns2934251:0crwdne2934251:0:

+52556

crwdns2934241:0crwdne2934241:0 lkvee

crwdns2947189:0crwdne2947189:0:

Toshiba Satellite M45 exhibits strange power/POST behavior.

crwdns2934249:0crwdne2934249:0:

Got this one handed to me in a dormant state - laptop hadn't been powered up in a while.   Charged the battery for 15 minutes, and proceeded to restore the hard drive to its factory state using the recovery DVD (for the first time - I had to break the case seal to use it).

During the first powerup for Windows, the laptop locks up when prompting for a user name.   Subsequent attempts to power down and up resulted in freezing at the Toshiba splash screen.  There was one 512MB memory chip and I changed its memory slot and changed the chip entirely.    There was no change in behavior.

I cleaned the heatsink, reseated the CPU, and replaced the hardened grease with Arctic Silver 5.   I removed the mPCI WiFi card.    I removed the battery and used AC power.

MHDD 4.6 essentially tested the hard drive to be good.  There weren't any sectors that were bad, but there was a pattern of slower sectors towards the end of the drive.   I also reseated the hard drive.

I flashed the BIOS from 1.70 to 2.00

I'm still getting lockups ... BUT ...

... they go away when I slap the laptop on the keyboard area.   I have yet to slap the underside, but I'll probably start doing that instead ...

... unless I can figure out whether there's a link between what I'm seeing and a possible issue with a bad ground on the motherboard.

Any thoughts?

Thanks for reading!

crwdns2866306:0crwdne2866306:0:

Toshiba Satellite M45

crwdns2915684:0crwdne2915684:0:

open