I'm sorry if some of you have seen this on another forum, but I'm at my wits' end.
This is about an old Tosh Satellite Pro L450D which was stuck at the back of a cupboard and I'm now trying to inject life into it again because my elderly dad needs a basic laptop for Zoom and browsing.
When I first dusted it down and booted it (Win 7 installed), all went well no problems, but the following day when I tried again, I had the black screen of death - not even a dim image on the screen.
Google pointed me to the usual remedies which I tried many times:
On close inspection it seemed that there was a signal from the VGA port - the external monitor wasn't displaying the "no signal" warning - so the graphics chip was doing something, even if it was just sending a blank screen.
When I pressed power, the hard drive leaps into action, but within a second it stops, and the only sign of life is the CPU fan and the PSU and "on" green lights. With the battery installed the battery light is red. I tested starting with and without the battery and PSU (a Toshiba PSU)
All this led me to think that perhaps the battery/PSU is my problem especially after I cooled the battery in the refrigerator, reinstalled in the laptop and tried to start it, without the HDD installed (to conserve power) - and lo! the Toshiba BIOS splash screen appeared which was progress. But things didn't go much further.
Thus encouraged I bought a new battery, and tried again with the HDD installed. And this time I got all the way to the Windows splash screen, then the spinner and then a permanent black screen. Obviously tried again with the charger plugged in and so many combinations with nothing happening.
Fiddling around switching off, on, with/without the HDD I can sometimes get the BIOS to run, but then nothing. The fan is cycling 20 seconds on, then off for a while, then it comes on again. I'm getting to the stage that these procedures seem like rituals and I'm not sure they're really telling me anything.
In conclusion - I don't think it can be the motherboard - that's been replaced with not much in the way of a change. The battery is new. Removing the RAM and changing it for other sticks makes no difference. As fan of that old show House, I'm pretty sure it's not lupus - so are we now suspecting the CPU? Anyone seen anything like this before and discovered the cause? I am reluctant to throw more money at this without a bit more confidence in the diagnosis.
Thanks
This is about an old Tosh Satellite Pro L450D which was stuck at the back of a cupboard and I'm now trying to inject life into it again because my elderly dad needs a basic laptop for Zoom and browsing.
When I first dusted it down and booted it (Win 7 installed), all went well no problems, but the following day when I tried again, I had the black screen of death - not even a dim image on the screen.
Google pointed me to the usual remedies which I tried many times:
- Remove power and battery, power button pressed down, then various reboot protocols using the shift and f8 and f5 buttons. Nothing worked.
- Removed the RAM (2 x 2GB sticks) and tried again. Nope.
- Plugged into a monitor - nothing
On close inspection it seemed that there was a signal from the VGA port - the external monitor wasn't displaying the "no signal" warning - so the graphics chip was doing something, even if it was just sending a blank screen.
When I pressed power, the hard drive leaps into action, but within a second it stops, and the only sign of life is the CPU fan and the PSU and "on" green lights. With the battery installed the battery light is red. I tested starting with and without the battery and PSU (a Toshiba PSU)
All this led me to think that perhaps the battery/PSU is my problem especially after I cooled the battery in the refrigerator, reinstalled in the laptop and tried to start it, without the HDD installed (to conserve power) - and lo! the Toshiba BIOS splash screen appeared which was progress. But things didn't go much further.
Thus encouraged I bought a new battery, and tried again with the HDD installed. And this time I got all the way to the Windows splash screen, then the spinner and then a permanent black screen. Obviously tried again with the charger plugged in and so many combinations with nothing happening.
Fiddling around switching off, on, with/without the HDD I can sometimes get the BIOS to run, but then nothing. The fan is cycling 20 seconds on, then off for a while, then it comes on again. I'm getting to the stage that these procedures seem like rituals and I'm not sure they're really telling me anything.
In conclusion - I don't think it can be the motherboard - that's been replaced with not much in the way of a change. The battery is new. Removing the RAM and changing it for other sticks makes no difference. As fan of that old show House, I'm pretty sure it's not lupus - so are we now suspecting the CPU? Anyone seen anything like this before and discovered the cause? I am reluctant to throw more money at this without a bit more confidence in the diagnosis.
Thanks