Toshiba Satellite A200 Random Shutdown

[colosos70]

I have an A200-1YO, 1.66ghz, upgraded to Windows 7 RC and 4Gb 667mhz PC 5300 RAM.
My problem started about a month ago when i was still running Vista Home Premium and 3Gb of Ram.
The machine just started switching itself off randomly. No warning, no error codes, no shutting down or logging off screen...just instant OFF.
At first i thought it was a virus so i scanned the hell out of the whole laptop with my Kaspersky Internet Security 2010 and found nothing. Sometimes it would be on for days then suddenly switch off. sometimes when i plug in my external hard drive or my IR remote receiver it will switch off and sometimes it won't. The most annoying one is when it switches off about 2-3 mins after switching it on and i have done absolutely nothing to it.
I have blanked the hd using DBan and installed Windows 7 and it worked fine for a week or so until it started happening again.
There seems to be no repeat action that causes it to switch off. I have read about the overheating ideas and although i have had the laptop for about 16 months the airflow out of the vent on the side seems to be the same as it always has been..I keep the laptop raised at the back to improve the air flow and it doesn't seem to be overheating.
I have run a program called RealTemp and everything seems to be running within acceptable parameters at between 74-79 centigrade and the max showing at 86 degrees.
The ram i have upgraded to and installed is the correct type for the machine as i used Kingston's ram check function as well as checking the Toshiba website, plus it has been a long time since i installed the first 2gb of ram upgrade and nothing happened then.
The laptop is out of warranty so it would cost me an arm and a leg to get it fixed or at least looked at by Toshiba.
Has anybody got any ideas or suggestions as to what the cause may be??
If more information is needed please state what details required.
Many thanks in advance.

 

[BR_15]

Does it shut down while its plugged in with the power supply? or when its running off the battery? sounds kind of like the battery is bad and or the power supply is bad. do you have another known good battery/power supply you could swap to test it?

 

[colosos70]

It doesn't seem to matter whether it's on battery or mains power, it still shuts down.
It's been running now for about 5hours on mains (with the battery in) with no problems. I'm constantly monitoring the temperature and at the moment it's down to 66-69 degrees c.
I don't have another power supply or battery that i could test it out with.
Wish i did!

 

[BR_15]

Ok lets try this then.

1. Until you can get around to Step 2, go into Start > Settings > Control Panel > Toshiba Power Saver, be sure 'Full Power' is selected and highlighted, click "Details," then "Power Save Mode" tab at top, then drag the "Processor speed" slider down from "Full" to "Mid" (or even lower if the shutdowns continue).

2. If you are comfortable tinkering around inside your laptop (power off, remove all cables, remove battery, ground yourself, preferably wear plastic gloves), remove all screws on the underside (bottom) of the computer, gently open the case. Your aim is to expose the CPU (find where the heat comes out of your laptop on the side - that heat is from the fan that is cooling your CPU, which should be very closeby). Wipe off all the thermal grease that is on the top side of your CPU so that it is completely clean. Apply new thermal grease (usually $1.00 for a little tiny packet at a computer supplies shop, or $3-$15 for a more sizeable quantity) to the top side of the CPU. Carefully put your laptop back together. If you previously lowered the CPU speed (from Step 1), be sure you ratchet it back up to its maximum speed again.


If those steps dont work See if you can get hold of a boot floppy for Windows 98, if you can Boot to a DOS Prompt with that and the system remains stable your problem points to an Operating System fault.

If the system crashes it points to a hardware problem.

Let me know how this goes, good luck!

 

[BR_15]

almost forgot, check if theres an update for the bios.

 

[colosos70]

It just shutdown again completely when it was totally idle! I'm very close to throwing it at the wall then jumping on it!
I have the latest bios update already installed.
I'll try taking it apart tomorrow once i get some thermal grease.
The Toshiba Power Saver is no longer installed because i have changed to Windows 7.
Can the same thing be done with the advanced settings in the Power Options? It has options for the minimum and maximum power states and the system cooling policy.

 

[colosos70]

oh and btw, it's 64 bit Windows 7 i'm running.

 

[BR_15]

right click anywhere on screen
click on properties
then sreen saver tab
then power tab


this is just copy/past from someone else, im really not very familiar with the windows 7 setup. See if this is accurate

 

[colosos70]

I put it in for repair and i just got it back. The man in the shop said it's probably the motherboard that needs repairing/replacing!
I was hoping that it was just a build up of dust in one of the fans but to no avail.
He tested the ram, the power supply and the os and they're all fine.
You know where i can get a cheap motherboard for it in the UK?? haha!
Not sure if i trust them ones on eBay!

 

[BR_15]

ouch bad motherboard...sorry man im not sure where to get one in the UK. If you felt comfortable doing this you could replace the mboard your self. Ill bet you could find a manual for your laptop, its really not hard to swap out if you have directions. It would deffinetly save you a couple bucks, im sure wherever you take it to get replaced will charge an arm and a leg for their 1 hour of labor. And yes when dealing with a motherboard im not sure id trust ebay either.

 

[colosos70]

hi there br_15. just thought i'd let you know that i got it fixed and it wasn't the motherboard but it was an internal fault. the guy in the shop wouldn't tell me exactly what it was though (like it was a government secret!).
he had used a prog called speedfan and upgraded the bios (not sure where from as i had already checked on the toshiba site and had the latest version).
just before i put it in the shop it had only been working on the battery and whenever i plugged in the power cable it would switch off instantly.
i'm guessing that the fan speed had something to do with it obviously, but i don't care anymore! it's working now and i just wanted to say thanks for your help.
Cheers, Dude! (or is it Dudette?)

 

[Guest]

i am also facing exactly the same problem. After thorough checkup, i came to a strange conclusion. The battery is causing the laptop to behave like this. in my case, while charger's cable plugged in and power and battery LEDs, both glowing, battery doesn't get charged. As window doesn't have any plan like hibernate, or standby for low battery while charger being plugged in. so sudden power loss is the result. another annoying thing is that i am unable to power up my laptop on ac power with battery out of it's compartment.

 

[kocu]

Hi, same with me. I've been struggling with my A200 since a few months. And it's getting worst now. I can run fine with battery, but whenever I plug the power in, it's a random countdown to shutdown. I've tried everything I know which might cause this, cleaning my air vent, changing thermal grease (twice), cleaning all internal parts, testing many power configuration, etc.

However, I'm pretty sure this isn't a hardware issue, because when running safe mode it never happens. And I've tested running 2 live linux from cd and both are working just fine. Or even if it is a hardware issue, it must be something very specific. Now I'm using a workaround with live linux from usb (slax). It's working perfectly without shutdown.

I've also tried to use speedfan and realtemp to monitor my temperature, and my bios is already the latest version. COLOSOS70, can you please please asked what actually fixed by the techie? 🙁 this error is killing me

 

[dan w]

OMFG i have the exact same laptop and exact same problem for over a month now. I have completely dissassemble it and test it like you guys did heatsink, clean, thermal paste and all the shits. But the god damn thing still shutting down on me randomly, driving me insane. I came to the conclusing it's a freaking small glitch but can't put my finger into it. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[jgma]

Hi all, I might be having the same problem but want to verify the symptoms.

Seemingly random 'freezes' - power light stays on and, bizarrely, the DVD drive light turns on and stays on, but screen goes blank (display + backlight), no HD activity, utterly unresponsive. Thought maybe the DVD drive had some fault (eg throwing a bad interrupt) but I tried removing the drive and the problem still occurred. Independent of OS, has happened during startup as well as once Vista is booted up. Has occurred on battery power, mains power with the battery in, and mains power with the battery removed. The only thing to do at that point is hold down the power button until the hard power-off kicks in and reboot. Seems largely random but possibly linked to minor vibration/shock..? Not entirely sure.

Regards
Jim

 

[Onaro]

Yes it works. Yupiii. Just decrease speed of fan.

 

[dudikuff]

onaro how do u decrease speed of fan.

 

[Guest]

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.

 

[cody1303]

So I finally took my notebook in to the shop to fix. Note that I am pretty savvy with computers, and I really did not find anything out of the ordinary with the Harddrive, RAM, Fan and Heatsink.

The first shop suggested me to buy a very strong cooling pad, which I did, but did not help.

The second shop, ran some diagnosis and concluded there was nothing wrong with the items stated above. Their conclusion, as well as mine, is that there was something wrong with the motherboard.

Seeing this, I formatted my Windows 7 (it was running on Vista before with the same problems) and installed Ubuntu on it.

Surprisingly, it's been over 3 days, and my computer have not powered off since, even for long durations of time (bout 12hours).

Conclusion: Hardware/software conflict with Windows. Ubuntu works. Honestly, I'm pretty impressed with the speed and simplicity of Ubuntu too..

 

[Guest]

I also have Toshiba Laptop 2 and half year old encountered similar problem always shuts off anytime during any condition. I cannot do my work well due to it shuts off all my work will lost. I planning to upgrade to window & from window vista after I see your situation . I drop of this idea. Anywhere I used battery only without AC power adapter it work seem all right once I plug in AC power adapter the nightmare is start. It will shuts off anytime without any warning,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

 

[Ondro]

Hi,

I think it's a time to write to Toshiba(to update the bios, maybe this is a problem).
Who will be the initiator?

 

[Ondro]

Btw., when you disable one core. It works fine. But not for long 🙁

 

[corsa59]

Here is a solution that I found, and it has worked for me, so far.......

My guess is your laptops are exhibiting the same problem I faced, random crashes and freezes, with no warning.

I replaced the hard drive, reinstalled windows vista, same result.
Replaced ram, no better.
Replaced power supply, no good.
Run in safe mode, works fine, but very limited use.
Removed all the startup programs, still crashed.
Pulled my hair out, that worked for 10 minutes......
Replaced CPU, new thermal paste, reseated everything, and reassembled, and it worked perfectly, for about 3 hours, and then started crashing and freezing again.
Replaced vista with 7, and it wouldn't start at all........

Then I found a forum article that suggested that it only occurred when BOTH the battery and AC power supply where plugged in, disconnected the AC, started on battery only, and the problem seems to have completely dissappeared.

Not a solution, but certainly a step in the right direction. Now it appears then that something causes the computer to freeze on the motherboard at the AC point, or in the connection between the AC and the battery.

Forum suggested changing a bios setting.

Change the following setting in the bios setup, under the 'Advanced' tab
Dynamic CPU Frequency Mode = Always Low (NOT DYNAMIC)
Save and Restart

Now, this laptop has been running on battery only power without a problem for 2hours without a hitch, I was lucky if I could get 20 minutes out of it before, and most times it would not even start.

I am about to connect the AC power (whilst running) to see what happens, so I will report back on the result in the morning after it has been running for 5 or 6 hours.

Hope this helps. Will report back with further results

 

[corsa59]

Adding further to the previous post, woke up this morning to discover the computer FROZEN again. Worked for 1/2 hour with the AC plug in before I went to bed, not sure how long before it froze. So changing the Dynamic CPU Frequency Mode appears NOT to work.

Following another suggestion at the moment, and I have disabled the multi core feauture of the CPU in the bios, so now in Device Manager under processors i see only 1 processor, not 2.

First impression, I have had the computer working (with the AC plugged in) long enough to find this thread again, and write this reply, and no crash yet.......

The computer is occasionally pausing, sometimes for an instant, and sometimes for a few seconds, assuming this has something to do with only running in single core, it didn't do it before, but at least it comes back to life, and doesn't freeze or crash (so far).

Further reports to come.....

25 minutes later, pc still working, pausing appears to be related to this forum as it is not doing it with any other software. Going out for a couple of hours, let you know how it goes when I get back.

 

[corsa59]

6 hours later, and the a200 has NOT missed a beat. AC power attached, battery in, all the startup programs running, including the vdeo card drivers and utility, the CPU set to single core, and the Dynamic CPU Frequency Mode set to Always low, and the computer has NOT frozen or crashed once. Used it for 1 hour, then went to work for 5 hours. Never in the past week have I come back to find the PC not frozen. Maybe I have solved the problem from this computer, hope it works for you too......