Toshiba Satellite A200 Random Shutdown

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Hello,
Just joint this forum and to say thanks for your help guys as I am having problems with a200 toshiba,by the way toshiba used to be good but nowadays are all rubbish,anyway thanks,I just unistall processor and also display adapter,both are double under device manager,and put low instead dynamic CPU and seems to be working for the first time with ac charger. I tried previously almost everything,update CPU,new xp,silver compound,definitely toshiba fault,like all other models,eg,toshiba tecra 9100 yamaha sound problem with sp2,still not solved a problem,downloaded at least 50 drivers,using this one for diagnostics/com port,also qosmio g30,gpu repair program,toshiba fault again-at least theta admitted,asked for repair over 200 pounds,sold it.
Once again thanks and let you know if I have problems again.
I read so many replies regarding this but ussualy people say it's problem with gpu or dirt,it is nothing to do with that as laptop switching off sometimes in cole of seconds with ac charger,and finally I also tried to run benchmark and speed fun but could not Finnish it as it swithes off.
Regards
Donbato
 
Good to hear Donbato

No need to uninstall the video card drivers. Although it works using a standard VGA adapter driver, using the settings I recommended for the CPU frequency, and only using a single core of the processor is STILL working for this computer using the ATI drivers after 24 hours of solid operation.

Much better screen resolution from the ATI drivers than from the VGA drivers.

No freezing or crashes, hopefully this will continue.
 
Hi Corsa59,
You are right,as I restarted it asked me to install again display driver,which I did,also as I held a laptop on knees it happens again,same story,but I suspect that there is a loose contact somewhere,but I did not put screws back,so that maybe a case,anyway when I put back all I will let you know,in mean time I am even moving it,just typing.
Regards
 
Hi!
Anyone try to connect another AC supply. An universal one, or kind of. Probably it helps, i would like to try, but i cant get anyone this days.

It's a new compatibility's problem between Windows and Toshiba, i dont know what, but sounds like everyone starts to have the problem since a few months. Who knows what the f*** is going on, but im starting to freak out with the random shutdowns.

By the way, using an only core...well, its a solution, but it decrease the potencial of our toshiba by 50%.

Thanks all!
 
Hello all
tnx for the tip....ive been fighting with my machine (satellite a305) for some weeks with no success.
i did try the sugestions here on my bios...now running only 1 cpu....but did not solve it. running on battery or safe mode is ok .
How are you guys dealing with it.....are you planning to leve the machine half capacity....any new clues
tnx
 
Well I am sure that there is a loose contact,I assemble a laptop and it starts again randomly switching off,I tried to bend a little bit and it works fine,actually put a lighter under the wireless switch,perfect,so in my case the problem is a connection somewhere,by the way the plastics are so cheap,very soft,not solid like some other models.
I will try again sometimes to dissemble and try to find a loose connection.
Regards
Donbato
 
I just registered on this forum to post a SOLUTION. I had the same symptoms, but working on Single core on my A200-1ZF (same as 1S9),always low cpu freq and only on battery is not a solution. Or is a solution if You'd like to go back to times like Commodore 64. Anyway. I called Toshiba Poland (as for my country) and they said nothing helpful cause my laptop is out of warranty. Anyway they said something about condensators but I didn't find any on my motherboard (sic!). Anyway problem occured after I upgraded Polish Vista 32 bit prof (the one sold on recovery disc) to US Win7 Prof. It occured after half a year of usage of Win7. Anyway I switched back to Vista,formatted the HD etc ,and NOTHING. I changed the RAM and the AC as my wife has the same laptop AND NOTHING. I cleaned the dust inside the laptop,changed thermal paste and NOTHING. Called Thosiba Poland again,they said that they can check my laptop for any faults which costs around 50 EUR! I said to myself FU Toshiba. I bought a laptop for nearly 700 EUR and I need it working. So after I switched back to Vista I d/l program called Toshiba Tempro. It has found like 15 drivers out of date and the ONE MOST IMPORTANT. BIOS UPDATE. I said to myself it's now or never. Guys when You update Your BIOS and the laptop will switch off it's gonna be dead and usless. Luckily for me it didn't shut down and after the BIOS update (I nearly ate all my finger nails) the problem VANISHED. Laptop is working now for like 2 days like it used to. High Performance with AC plugged in,2 cores working and the frequency Dynamic not always low. Hope it will help You guys as well

Cheers from Poland
Eden Prime
 
hi, i have toshiba t135D, this tends to happen when battery is under 20%, and only saw once it did when it was plugged in. screen would just freeze for a second, and screen turns to black, but LCD backlight is on with power LED, WIFI LED, no HDD acti. i would have to turn it off by holding the power button. i have this posted a forum here little lower on same page, no one is helping me -_-
i thought this was pretty similar problem. called toshiba, told me to reformat, which still doesnt work
 
Well, i have some news.
I think i solved the problem for now. For me, the random shutdown might be caused by the ******* wireless card. I shwitch off the wireless, and i've been with no problems for three days,playing, working, without shutdowns; and yesterday, i connect the wireless and....it shutdown! so i'm gonna buy a usb wireless, or maybe anoter wireless card to change it, i dunno now, i prefer to be sure that the wireless card is the problem, but i'm 80% sure that it is.

By the way, the solution with the bios update, im working with windows 7 64bits, and the bios updates from toshiba are only for vista 64bits/32bits. Should i update the bios whit the vista 64bits update, although im using windows 7 64bits?


Thanks and good look for all with this fu**ing problem!
 
Hi There All!

I don't mean to be rude . . Computer Engineer here! . .but this is ALL BUNK! . . the problem with the A200 is simple . . . Toshiba dropped the ball on the fan exhausting into your desk, or maybe even lap! . . "Have you burned your thighs on this puppy yet?" . . In canada there was a very "Quiet recall" by certain retailers that were getting sick of these overheating complaints . . .Toshiba in its lets go the "extra inch" model, graciously repaired/replaced the fans in the laptops of it most ferverent complainers, thus absolving themselves from admitting it was a ridiculous design . .and those suckered into buying this unit from glossy well-hyped advertising should have had the refund/or rplace option! . . So there you have it! . . .if you stuffed insulation in the cooling coils of your refrigerator or radiator in your car, how well would they operate? . . So sorry to see so many trusting people duped by yet another mulinational swindler! . . . ."Hello Lenovo!" . .really too bad, Toshiba for years, was THE name in notebooks!

Best of luck all . . . no ill will intended by any of my comments!

RJ


I have a Toshiba Satellite A200 for two years, since brand new out of the box, it just randomly switches off suddenly, no shut down procedure, no warning, doesn't matter if it has a full battery and is on power.

When I got it, was pre-loaded with windows vista basic and 512 mb mem, which was rubbish, because it kept crashing and was painfully slow, couldn't use it at all for some weeks until I could afford to upgrade it, I upgraded it to 2 x 1gb toshiba ram chips, and loaded vista premium.

Much better, used it much more often, no more crashes and slowness, except noticed occasionally it just popped off, like the power had been cut completely, didn't use it that often back then so didn't really notice it too much. Apparently laptop repair experts insist it is likely an overheating problem, or possibly a power supply problem, however there are some problems with this theory:

1. fault since brand new out of box

2.can switch on immediately after shut down (was told that should not be able to restart straight away if overheated)

3. random, can have fault for days while downloading, can play games for hours without problem, can start up, within a couple of minutes will shut off, sometimes will do it several times a day, other times it can go many days without problem, possibly a week, however can still just pop off after just cold-starting it, and when only being idle on desktop only for 10 minutes.

4. I opened it up (don't recommend this) to check for dust, and it was clean.
Problem does seem to be more frequent these days, however could be that I use it much more often, though haven't ruled out overheating entirely.

Now I am not sure, but it seems to only do it when both battery and mains are plugged in at the same time. Battery is usually full, and charges fine, I use the battery every few days till flat then use mains, battery is often full while using laptop on mains for long periods of time, I haven't noticed the fault with just battery, but then I don't use just battery often. Recently I left the battery out for a week, to see if the fault would happen, and it hasn't, put the battery back in now, been going few hours, not had fault yet. Has anyone else had any success with this?

Ran speedfan to monitor. Cores run around 45C - 47C, jumps occasionally to 48C - 53C for a second.

Right now I am under the impression it does it only when on mains and battery is in. (could be wrong though not tested theory enough).

If it's a power supply fault why doesn't the battery prevent it from turning off, battery backs it up when power's switched off or unplugged suddenly.

I am more inclined to think it's a problem with the motherboard, although I do suspect ram as well, and I still suspect a fan problem too.
Click to expand...
 
even i am facing the same problem...its a toshina A 200 bought i india, only spec i am sure of is its got 1.73 dual core processor....while i was on windows genuine windows vista...same thing used to happen then one day macnine wont boot also and will give 3 beeps....i went to to two repair guys...one changedd grapichs card...then laptop worked fine...but then same problem...then i went to other repair guy he fixed mother board...then when i got it back i changed it to windows 7....now i am facing same problem again it just goes blank w/o warining....i have tried as some one suggested changing bios setting dynamic cpu frequency mode it didnt work....i tried running in safe mode where it dosent crash/ freeze at all..
Its hard to get exact specs of my machine as its not listed on indian toshiba website as well as international website....
 
Hi guys, I have the same problem, the shutdown thing on my toshiba a200...

It's 3 years old and only recently the battery started to fail - it lasts like 40, 50% of the initial time. Since this happened the pc shuts down randomly if the battery and the charger are both plugged.

The rams are working properly, the cpu also, the graphical card also.

I suspect it is the motherboard, I just ordered a new one and I will try to see if it works. It might be the current 'thing' on the motherboard - the one which supplies it with current from the charger.

I bought meanwhile a new charger and it doesnt shutdown but it freezes instead 🙁
I hope until the new motherboard arrives I wont fry the rams or anything else.

I will post some fresh news as soon as I will test the new motherboard.
 
Finally the motherboard was the problem - The current received from the charger was not distributed correctly and this caused an overheating of the other components.

I bought one on ebay with 50 euros and voila - the laptop is running perfect again.

 
It seems to me that toshiba ows us big time with their faulty laptops. We shouldnt be the bearer of these troubles ans costs. I'm seriously planning on contacting them and force them to acknowledge the problem and help us/ repay us, for the trouble we went trough. This is no different than all those asian cars being recalled from the US. If nessecary we can blow this out in the open. Very very bad marketing for toshiba.... They might be willing to listen, but we do need to act as a group then. By that i mean a groupcomplaint of all of us at the same time. Also from te people who already have it fixed by now. Im quite willing to take a lead in this (live in the netherlands), but i do need back up to make my point and to be taken seriously. Anyone interested?? Please let me know asap. With kind regards, J. Kievits
 
Ok, I am the another one to join the problem... I have an A200-23K. The first time random shutdown started was about half a year after purchase. So I found authorised Toshiba service here, in Cracow, and gave them on the guarantee service. They... just changed the motherboard and it worked... for next half a year... Then it happened again. The guarantee was still valid, so I gave it to them again, and they changed the motherboard again... This time it was three months until it happened again. Again changing the motherboard... Finally, the guarantee was over, so when it happened again, I gave it to non-authorised service that I was recommended as more professional and into the hardware. They changed just the graphics and it worked again... but unfortunately not for long. This most recent random shutdown started, when I started to carry my laptop... and I discovered, that it reacts to movement. So I gave it again to the professional service. And it started... They haven' t localized the problem yet. Everything I know is that shutdown occurs when motherboard is tapped or slightly moved. This is due to some electrical problems on the motherboard or between components and motherboard or somewhere else. This service is still fighting with these (they have now also second A200 with the same symptoms on service), but there is only a slight chance of success and I am afraid that I will have to buy a new laptop... Ok, so this is my story, maybe someone can help? It is a hardware-related forum as I can see, so I hope to get some help here...
 
Just to add - I am running Arch Linux on my laptop, all set by me from the beginning, so not supported by Toshiba, but the problem is definitely with hardware, not with software...
 


I have absolutely the same problem ):
 
I've been having what appears to be a related problem. This is on a Toshiba A200 PSAF6A-07G01N, about 2.5 years old. A few months ago, the machine began spontaneously rebooting (presently at least a couple of times a week; it has been progressively more frequent, I think). The machine simply powers off briefly (1-5s or thereabouts), and then restarts. The power-off is instantaneous, with no blue-screen or other apparent software problem. It also occurs in Windows Vista x86, Windows 7 x86, and Ubuntu Linux x86 10.10.
I have tried running the system without a hard drive (from boot CD) - same problem
Fresh install of Windows - same problem
System restore - same problem

I have been monitoring the core temperatures while running burn-in tests. The cores reach 72ish degrees celcius (which they are on while I write this) and seem to operate fine at this peak temperature. Actually, it seems to be more frequent that the machine reboots when I am not actively using in rather than when I am. Mind you, that may simply be because it spends more time running without me actively working on it than with me working on it.

Anyway, after 1.5 continuous hours of burn-in testing the machine still hasn't rebooted during this process. Of course, that may be just pot luck.

Notable, the machine has *never* spontaneously rebooted while running on the battery. It does reboot with the AC power connected, with or without the battery inserted.

As I find more trends or patterns, I'll report them.
Also, the machine is running the most recent firmware (2.5?).
 
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