toshiba satellite blinking cursor instead of boot

[berbes]

hello! i have an older toshiba satellite that is only showing a blinking cursor. the client told us the HDD failed (and it did), so i tried another HDD and still the blinking cursor. also can't get into bios. i took out the DVD and memory, but then get nothing at all. it powers up for a few seconds, then shuts down. i've tried swapping the memory out, but then it goes back to the blinking cursor. no beeps whatsoever.

thanks for any ideas/direction.

berbes

 

[rocktalkrock]

The blinking cursor is a timing device telling you the laptop is searching for something (boot drive, DVD drive, USB key) and can't find it. It should eventually time out and go to the next item in the boot menu. How are you trying to get into the BIOS, pressing the F2 or F8 key?

 

[STUD858]

I've had that. Was not accepting the handshake with the hdd I was swapping in. The hard drive worked in a different laptop. Weird fault. I found another hard drive that worked. Try a few more hard drives. Or its another device that's causing handshake freeze. Remove all peripherals. Or a section or peripheral management chip on motherboard. Schematics would be needed to scout around Sata port. Good luck. I find these faults interesting if challenging.