toshiba laptop wont' boot

Hi,
A neighbor dropped off her daughter's laptop this afternoon, "It won't
boot."
It has XP home on it.
When you turn it on it stops at the Windows splash screen.
I reseated, and cleaned the contacts of the memory and hard drive.
Tried safe mode, and last known good. Same thing. It starts to
load and then stops.
I set it to boot fm the optical first and tried a Ubunto linux disk.
It loads for about 20 seconds and then stops.
She brought the recovery disk, so I tried that and it
loads the ram disk and then stops.
So, in general it goes through about 15 seconds of a load
and then stops. The screen is working ok because i have no
trouble getting into the bios. There's not many settings in
there so I doubt there is an issue in that neck of the woods.
Its a Toshiba Satallite with one 512 mb sodimm clocked at 533MHZ in it.
I tried the sodimm in the other slot, but the same thing happened.
AS soon as the windows splash screen comes up, it stops.
I don't have a known good 533MHZ sodimm so i am unable to swap
out the memory. Or the hard drive either, 160GB SATA WD.
Any ideas much appreciated.
Al

ps: the charging system works, and the battery holds a charge.

~AlicGinnis~ wrote:
Hi,
A neighbor dropped off her daughter's laptop this afternoon, "It won't
boot."
It has XP home on it.
When you turn it on it stops at the Windows splash screen.
I reseated, and cleaned the contacts of the memory and hard drive.
Tried safe mode, and last known good. Same thing. It starts to
load and then stops.
I set it to boot fm the optical first and tried a Ubunto linux disk.
It loads for about 20 seconds and then stops.
She brought the recovery disk, so I tried that and it
loads the ram disk and then stops.
So, in general it goes through about 15 seconds of a load
and then stops. The screen is working ok because i have no
trouble getting into the bios. There's not many settings in
there so I doubt there is an issue in that neck of the woods.
Its a Toshiba Satallite with one 512 mb sodimm clocked at 533MHZ in it.
I tried the sodimm in the other slot, but the same thing happened.
AS soon as the windows splash screen comes up, it stops.
I don't have a known good 533MHZ sodimm so i am unable to swap
out the memory. Or the hard drive either, 160GB SATA WD.
Any ideas much appreciated.
Al

ps: the charging system works, and the battery holds a charge.


Any chance it is overheating ?

Try a CD with memtest86+ (memtest.org) on it. That test may be able to load
in less time than it takes the computer to freeze.

After each freeze, does the time to achieve the next freeze reduce ?
As if the machine is already hot, and doesn't need much more to
overheat it ?

Paul

clip

Any chance it is overheating ?

no, its not over heating. The screen will sit there with the
windows splash screen up forever, and rebooting time to
freeze is constant.

thanks for the memtest86 idea, i'll try it.


Try a CD with memtest86+ (memtest.org) on it. That test may be able to
load
in less time than it takes the computer to freeze.

After each freeze, does the time to achieve the next freeze reduce ?
As if the machine is already hot, and doesn't need much more to
overheat it ?

Paul

"~AlicGinnis~" wrote in message
...
clip

Any chance it is overheating ?

no, its not over heating. The screen will sit there with the
windows splash screen up forever, and rebooting time to
freeze is constant.

thanks for the memtest86 idea, i'll try it.

My Toshiba was doing the same thing. It was the motherboard itself. I was
lucky it was under warranty.


Ed

Thanks for the input Ed, I'm starting to think its the same thing, but this
one is out of warranty.

I ran memtest for 90 minutes and it reported no errors.

Installing linux it hangs at the line:
Embedded Controller [ECO] (gpe 22)
That's at the end of the 2nd screen page during the load.
XP safe mode also hangs at the end of the 2nd page of load.

Could it be that is where the mobo HD controller is queried and there is no
reply, hence the stop?



"Ed Medlin" ed@ edmedlin.com wrote in message
...

"~AlicGinnis~" wrote in message
...
clip

Any chance it is overheating ?

no, its not over heating. The screen will sit there with the
windows splash screen up forever, and rebooting time to
freeze is constant.

thanks for the memtest86 idea, i'll try it.

My Toshiba was doing the same thing. It was the motherboard itself. I was
lucky it was under warranty.


Ed

~AlicGinnis~ wrote:
Thanks for the input Ed, I'm starting to think its the same thing, but this
one is out of warranty.

I ran memtest for 90 minutes and it reported no errors.

Installing linux it hangs at the line:
Embedded Controller [ECO] (gpe 22)
That's at the end of the 2nd screen page during the load.
XP safe mode also hangs at the end of the 2nd page of load.

Could it be that is where the mobo HD controller is queried and there is no
reply, hence the stop?


Is your Linux CD a "LiveCD" ? Can you boot to the
Linux desktop if so ?

Doing a search on the step you are stuck at, I think the "ECO" is actually "EC0"
with a zero on the end. This appears to be a typical DMESG sequence.

ACPI: PCI Interrupt Routing Table [\_SB_.PCI0._PRT]
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Routing Table [\_SB_.PCI0.PCIB._PRT]
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKA] (IRQs 1 3 4 5 6 7 10 12 14 15) *11
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKB] (IRQs 1 3 4 *5 6 7 11 12 14 15)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKC] (IRQs 1 3 4 5 6 7 10 12 14 15) *11
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKD] (IRQs 1 3 4 5 6 7 *11 12 14 15)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKE] (IRQs 1 3 4 5 6 7 *10 12 14 15)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKF] (IRQs 1 3 4 5 6 7 *11 12 14 15)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKG] (IRQs 1 3 4 5 6 7 10 12 14 15) *11
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKH] (IRQs 1 3 4 5 6 7 *11 12 14 15)
ACPI: Embedded Controller [EC0] (gpe 29) ---------------------
Linux Plug and Play Support v0.97 (c) Adam Belay
PnPBIOS: Scanning system for PnP BIOS support...
PnPBIOS: Found PnP BIOS installation structure at 0xc00ff020
PnPBIOS: PnP BIOS version 1.0, entry 0xeb000:0x3492, dseg 0xeb000
PNPBIOS fault.. attempting recovery.
PnPBIOS: Warning! Your PnP BIOS caused a fatal error. Attempting to continue

Maybe it is getting stuck at "Plug and Play" support.
The BIOS may have a setting to enable or disable PNP.

Paul



"Ed Medlin" ed@ edmedlin.com wrote in message
...
"~AlicGinnis~" wrote in message
...
clip

Any chance it is overheating ?
no, its not over heating. The screen will sit there with the
windows splash screen up forever, and rebooting time to
freeze is constant.

thanks for the memtest86 idea, i'll try it.

My Toshiba was doing the same thing. It was the motherboard itself. I was
lucky it was under warranty.


Ed

thanks Paul,
it was a live CD, and it stopped after the ram disk loaded.
unfortunately due to a death in the family I'm leaving in a few minutes and
had to return the laptop unworking.
al

"Paul" wrote in message ...
~AlicGinnis~ wrote:
Thanks for the input Ed, I'm starting to think its the same thing, but
this one is out of warranty.

I ran memtest for 90 minutes and it reported no errors.

Installing linux it hangs at the line:
Embedded Controller [ECO] (gpe 22)
That's at the end of the 2nd screen page during the load.
XP safe mode also hangs at the end of the 2nd page of load.

Could it be that is where the mobo HD controller is queried and there is
no reply, hence the stop?


Is your Linux CD a "LiveCD" ? Can you boot to the
Linux desktop if so ?

Doing a search on the step you are stuck at, I think the "ECO" is actually
"EC0"
with a zero on the end. This appears to be a typical DMESG sequence.

ACPI: PCI Interrupt Routing Table [\_SB_.PCI0._PRT]
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Routing Table [\_SB_.PCI0.PCIB._PRT]
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKA] (IRQs 1 3 4 5 6 7 10 12 14 15) *11
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKB] (IRQs 1 3 4 *5 6 7 11 12 14 15)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKC] (IRQs 1 3 4 5 6 7 10 12 14 15) *11
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKD] (IRQs 1 3 4 5 6 7 *11 12 14 15)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKE] (IRQs 1 3 4 5 6 7 *10 12 14 15)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKF] (IRQs 1 3 4 5 6 7 *11 12 14 15)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKG] (IRQs 1 3 4 5 6 7 10 12 14 15) *11
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKH] (IRQs 1 3 4 5 6 7 *11 12 14 15)
ACPI: Embedded Controller [EC0] (gpe 29)
---------------------
Linux Plug and Play Support v0.97 (c) Adam Belay
PnPBIOS: Scanning system for PnP BIOS support...
PnPBIOS: Found PnP BIOS installation structure at 0xc00ff020
PnPBIOS: PnP BIOS version 1.0, entry 0xeb000:0x3492, dseg 0xeb000
PNPBIOS fault.. attempting recovery.
PnPBIOS: Warning! Your PnP BIOS caused a fatal error. Attempting to
continue

Maybe it is getting stuck at "Plug and Play" support.
The BIOS may have a setting to enable or disable PNP.

Paul



"Ed Medlin" ed@ edmedlin.com wrote in message
...
"~AlicGinnis~" wrote in message
...
clip

Any chance it is overheating ?
no, its not over heating. The screen will sit there with the
windows splash screen up forever, and rebooting time to
freeze is constant.

thanks for the memtest86 idea, i'll try it.

My Toshiba was doing the same thing. It was the motherboard itself. I
was lucky it was under warranty.


Ed