Question Fleeting Power Up and Then Shutdown - Toshiba Satellite C551-B5110

[ihameed46]

I have a 9 year old fully functioning Toshiba laptop running Windows 8.1. Lately the laptop when powering up shows a blank screen but the blue hue of the back light is visible when the screen is tilted. The first few times when this happened the hard disk light came on solid and there was a brief glimmer of a Toshiba logo before the screen went blank again. Now the hard disk light does not come on and the laptop powers off after about two minutes. There are no beeps but the fan does come on the whole time it is on. I have opened the back cover and checked the heat generated by the CPU. It is warm to the touch but not very hot to trigger a shutdown. Similarly the hard disk gets slightly warm. I did remove the hard disk and try starting on but nothing was any different from what is described above.

So my question is whether this could be a failed RAM module (there is only one module on the motherboard)? Does the bios need a functioning RAM in order to post any script to the screen?

 

[Lutfij]

So my question is whether this could be a failed RAM module (there is only one module on the motherboard)?
You might want to try and see if the laptop has any error beeps when the laptop is powered without ram and a drive.

Does the bios need a functioning RAM in order to post any script to the screen?
You will need ram to get the laptop to POST. Without an OS drive you should see an error message show up on your screen with a No Boot Device Detected message.

I would try and borrow a stick of ram to drop into your laptop and see if that helps. You could conversely, remove the stick of ram from a powered down(and disconnected from the wall and battery) laptop and use an eraser on the gold contacts of the ram stick. Wipe clean and then reseat the stick of ram.

While the battery and wall outlet are disconnected, press and hold the power button for 30 seconds then, reseat the battery, power up and see if that helps.

 

[ihameed46]

The laptop does not have any error beeps as I tried with no hard drive or RAM and it just powered off immediately - there was no beep. I tried with another RAM module from a desk top but it did not accept that either. Just powered off immediately and no blue hue from the backlight. I also tried the 30 sec test with no power but none of the above helped. I did notice that the cabling from the motherboard to the screen looked a bit worse for wear but since I was seeing the Toshiba logo ever so briefly I have so far figured that the cabling could not be the culprit. The laptop has had a replacement screen put in and has been working fine for over a year. Now, I am beginning to wonder. Also, I didn't mention earlier that the NUMLOCK light does come on and stay on. Is that relevant as part of a POST process. Never focused while the laptop was functioning when the NUMLOCK light comes on during the POST process.