Why Toshiba Tecra TE2100 laptop locks up or will not boot at all?
One of our biggest customers use a lot of different Toshiba laptops and one of the models is Toshiba Tecra TE2100. We repaired many of these units and we noticed that some of them had very similar problems:
- Laptop locks up when you move it or sometimes freezes by itself. The video is still on, but the acupoint (keyboard mouse) and the keyboard itself do not work anymore.
- You can start the laptop, but you see CMOS (RTC) battery error on start up. After you clear the error, the laptop boots fine. After you reboot the laptop, you get the same error.
- Laptop will not boot at all. There is no power or power LED blinking. There is no hard drive activity. There is no external or internal video.
- When you press power button, laptop shows some activity, but there is no video on LCD screen.
At the beginning, when we just started working on this model, we tried to fix CMOS (RTC) battery error by replacing the RTC battery. Unfortunately, it didn’t help to fix the problem at all. We found that the main culprit of the problem is a poor connection between the system board and the power board (CMOS battery is connected to the power board). In some cases you can fix the problem by reseating the power board. Carefully disconnect if from the system board and connect it back. Turn on the laptop and see if it fixed your problem. If it didn’t help, most likely you have to replace the system board and the power board. Unfortunately, I cannot say exactly which one is causing the problem, the system board or the power board. The same story with laptop lock ups, try to reseat the power board.
You can fix a video problem by reseating the video card. We noticed, that over time the video board pops up from its connector on the system board and you can get video if you push it back in place.
Conclusion: before you start replacing parts, disassemble the laptop and try to fix the problem by reseating the power board and the VGA board. My disassembly guide for Toshiba Tecra TE2100 can help you to take apart the laptop.
If you find this article useful, please consider making a donation to the author. Thank you!
February 3rd, 2006 at 8:24 am
My Toshiba Laptop turns on but when it turns on it says i need a password to start my computer. I cant go to F12 or get on my computer without this password. Where would i find the password?
February 3rd, 2006 at 9:59 am
It looks like the BIOS password is set and you cannot boot the laptop without it. To remove the BIOS password you can call to Toshiba and ask them to assist you with BIOS password removal. Also you can try to remove the top cover from your laptop and disconnect the RTC (CMOS) battery for a few minutes. It should erase the BIOS password.
February 5th, 2006 at 9:02 am
goog morning , i would like to kown how to clear cmos of my laptop toshiba m30x-125,his serial number is Z4362119K, i’am desperate please !
February 5th, 2006 at 10:18 am
Hi Will,
I would try to remove the RTC (CMOS) battery and wait for 15-20 minutes. It might help to clear the BIOS password. After 15-20 minutes turn on the laptop without RTC battery connected and see if the BIOS password was cleared.
I just found a very interesting link: http://criggie.dyndns.org/tecr.....word.shtml. It shows how to create a plug for BIOS password removal for older and newer Toshiba laptops. You make the plug from a standard parallel port cable, plug it into the laptop and start it up. In this case you don’t have to open the laptop case. I haven’t tried it myself but I want to try it.
February 17th, 2006 at 2:39 am
PLEASE I NEED YOUR HELP. MY RTC (CMOS) ERROR MASSEGE APPEAR EVERYTIME I REMOVE THE MAIN BATTERY.
DON’T KNOW WHERE IS THE RTC (CMOS) BATTERY IS LOCATED IN MY TE2100 IVE TRY LOOKING IT UP IN GOOGLE NO HELP! PLEASE I NEED YOUR HELP ON THAT. SEN ME A PICTURE OF WERE IS LOCATED OR HOW I CAN FIND IT.
ME AND MY GIRLFRIENDS THANK YOU FOR YOUR HELP
HOPE TO HERE FROM YOU SOON
BYE!
February 17th, 2006 at 8:17 am
Here is Toshiba Tecra TE2100 Disassembly Guide. The RTC (CMOS) battery is pictured on STEP 23. You’ll see the battery in the lower right corner. The RTC battery (green disk) is located on the right side from the screw marked with a red circle.
February 17th, 2006 at 3:24 pm
Graphics problem,
When i turn on the labtop the graphics show errors with lines up and down the screen. This mostly restricts start up past the windows logo.
When the start up works through to the desktop it may see a lined square appear around the mouse or when running high memory usage software as DVD or computer gaming (Diablo II) the graphicd error (lines again) appears in the darker parts of the graphic images.
When i purchased the labtop it came without a video driver which i downloaded from nvidia. Tried from Toshiba but came into trouble with a missing file and reverted to nvidia’s option.
The error frequently freezes up the labtop and requires maual reboot. System restore is becoming an often to do exercise. Do i need to rearrange power settings, display options or may it require reseating the video card or is it a heat issue. I am seeking info prior dismantle. I have no warranty as it is second hand.
Help is greatly appreciated, cragles
p.s this is my first labtop and experience with winxp
February 17th, 2006 at 4:43 pm
I assume you have Toshiba TE2100 laptop as you didn’t mention what kind of laptop you have. First, I would try to connect an external monitor and see if you have the same problem with video on the monitor. If you see the same problem on the external monitor then the LCD screen is not your problem. If the video output on the external monitor is good, then it’s possible that your LCD screen is causing the problem. Also I would try to reseat the video card on the system board and all other cables related to the video card. Very often the video card pops up from the connector on the system board and it can cause all kind of problems. Try to press on the video card to make a better connection. I would definitely try to install a video driver provided by Toshiba. I have no idea why you get an error when you try to load the driver. It’s possible that the video card is bad itself.
February 19th, 2006 at 9:07 am
Thanks so much for this excellent service! I am in the middle of disassembling my TE2100 and as a hardware novice I find it fascinating! It’s out of warranty so no risk. One small missed detail – there is a screw that must be removed before you can remove the cover top assembly. It is located at the upper right area between the right LCD assembly screw (to the right) and the right rectangular slot opening (to the left). It would be appropriate to add this screw removal on Step 17. Thanks again!
February 23rd, 2006 at 5:53 am
My laptop (TE2100) was working fine until I lifted and moved it around at which point it turned off and the LED(?) for power flashes orange. In the troubleshooting manual it says if display is flashing orange it has overheated and needs time to cool but given plenty off time the system will not turn on. Any ideas? Thanks,
Brendan
February 23rd, 2006 at 8:30 am
I would say it is a bad connection between the system board and the power board. When you lift up the laptop and move it, you flex the laptop case and the power board gets separated from the system board. I think it is possible fix the laptop if you reseat the power board on the system board. You have to carefully lift up the power board to separate it from the connector on the system board and put it back in. I am not sure 100% that it will fix your laptop, but you can try. When a power LED flashes orange it usually means that you have a serious power issue on the system board.
March 8th, 2006 at 11:51 am
My TE2100, WinXP is stuck in a boot loop. Press power and the toshiba welcome screen comes on and then the WinXP screen appears, but it then restarts itself. Occasionally, this process will be interupted by a black screen with a warning that says a system file is missing. I have been unable to change the restarting pattern by using safe mode, debugging mode, etc. I can’t figure out how to get into bios to try to boot from the CD.
How can I either (1) get to bios to change the boot order, or (2) reformat the HDD?
This may be a stupid question: If I take a magnet to the HDD will I be able to reformat with my winXP?
Thanks for your help.
March 8th, 2006 at 12:19 pm
Hi Matt,
To boot your laptop from a CD-ROM you can do next:
1. Turn on the laptop and tap on C key a few times, it should boot the unit directly from the CD drive.
2. Turn on the laptop and tap on ESC key. After that you should see the boot menu. F12 for newer laptops.
3. Turn on the laptop and tap on F1 or F2 (do not remember). It should take you to the BIOS where you can change the boot order. On newer laptops press ESC key first and then F1 to get to the BIOS setup.
You can also try to use “Last Known Good Configuration” option. It might help you to take your OS to the last successful login.
It is very possible that you have a failed hard drive. I would test the hard drive first. To test it you can use Hitachi Drive Fitness Test (find in through google).
You cannot reformat the hard drive using a magnet. To reload the OS you should use a recovery CDs or a generic Windows XP CD. If you use a generic Windows XP CD, you will have to download and install all missing device drivers from Toshiba website. Put it in the drive and press C key during start up. Follow the instructions.
March 9th, 2006 at 11:32 am
I have a toshiba te2100. The problem i get with it is when the battery gets to about 54%, it says the battery level is critical and hibernates immediately. I changed the battery amd still experience the same problem what could be the problem
March 9th, 2006 at 11:48 am
Hi Dee,
Check your Power Option settings in Control Panel.
Open Control Panel, click on Power Options tab, click on Alarms tab.
You will see to sliders for Low Battery Alarm and Critical Battery Alarm. Normally first one is set to 10% and second one set to 4%. I guess in your case it is set to 54%. Apparently your laptop is set up to go to hibernation after the battery level riches 54%.
March 16th, 2006 at 6:14 am
Hi cj2600,
I have checked the Power Options settings and the Critical Battery Alarm is set to even 2%. And the laptop still hibernates at about 54%. What usually happens is when it is about 54% it brings on the Critical Battery Alarm message and by then the battery level is reading 3% and it hibernates shortly afterwards. The laptop runs XP with no Service Pack installed. I am wondering if that could be the problem
March 16th, 2006 at 9:45 pm
Hi Dee,
Most likely the battery is bad and should be replaced. Last week I had to troubleshoot a laptop with the same problem. After I charged the battery 100%, I remove the power jack and left the laptop to run off the battery. After about 15-20 minutes the battery level dropped to 75%. 1-2 minutes the low battery level message popped up and the laptop turned off. There shouldn’t be a problem if you run Windows XP without Service Pack.
You can also try to download and reinstall Toshiba Power Management software. It is possible the software was corrupted and causing the problem.
March 19th, 2006 at 6:07 pm
I just wanted to thank you for explaining how to fix the boot problem. For me my laptop slowly degraded to the point where it was useless. Now, it works! it still will randomly reboot and lock on start up but atleast it works!!! Usually I find removing the hard drive or disconnctiong the keyboard helps it get started. Then again I could be crazy. I carry a set of screwdrivers around with my laptop now
On problem I did have.. how to get the cdrom drive out? I couldn’t pull it out from the side.
March 21st, 2006 at 6:10 pm
On the bottom of the laptop there is a latch for the CD-ROM drive. On the left side from the latch there is a screw. Remove the screw, open the latch and slide the CD-ROM drive away from the computer.
March 25th, 2006 at 10:25 am
Reseating the power board helped but did not fix it completely. But I did find another way to make it work ***flawlessly***. The solution for me was to put something underneath the laptop- to make it sit at a slight incline. Position a wedge on the right hand side, somewhere below the HD at an angle around 15 derees. After considerable efforts – I don’t believe it has to do with straining the motherboard in any way. A buddy told me maybe a capacitor has fluid in it and it has been ‘draining’ over the last few years, the slight angle would help. Sounds a little crazy to me, but like I said – I don’t think it has anything to do with straining the mother board. I’ve tried to emulate it without gravity by pushing on it – for hours – and couldn’t get it to be as stable as a small incline. Anyways, I hope someone out there finds this useful.
March 30th, 2006 at 3:05 pm
I have a TE2100 with the power in light flashing orange it turns out to be a hex code of 4F or 79 in decimal the binary is 01001111. I tried to find a service manual to translate this message, but the manual I found wasn’t for the Tecra TE2100 and the code wasn’t listed. The laptop is having a power problem of some sort. It charges the battery and I can reset the computer only to get the same non booting behavior and the error code flashes again. I would like to pin point the problem before trial and error disassembly. I haven’t had the best of luck with disassembly. Do you have a lead on the error codes?
)
Cool manual. Looks like a fun job.
March 30th, 2006 at 7:12 pm
Hi Tamsey,
When you translate the power LED flashing code you have to read it backward. If it flashes 01001111 you should read 11110010 or F2 in hex.
Here is what Toshiba says about F2h error for Toshiba Tecra TE2100 laptop: CPUVCC voltage is 1.08 V or less with the power turned on.
March 31st, 2006 at 4:07 pm
CJ you rock man.
Thanks a bunch. I totally missed the read backwards thing.
So I did disassemble the unit and tried your disconnecting the power card connectors and then reconnecting them solution. Then after reassembly. It worked and I used it 2 times, then the software locked and didn’t respond to the cont alt del commard interrupt. Then I bumped the laptop and it did the power crash again. With the same code.
Do you have any other suggestion in light of the error code?
March 31st, 2006 at 4:27 pm
Hey tamsey,
We used to repair a lot of these units some time ago. We noticed that the majority of all TE2100 laptops fail to boot because of a bad connection between the system board and the power board. I cannot say witch one was causing the problem. Laptops we repaired were under Toshiba warranty and we replaced both boards.
BTW, may be I misunderstood you, but you have to reseat the power board itself not just the connectors. You have to lift it up the power board to disconnect it from the system board. The connector is located under the power board.
April 2nd, 2006 at 8:32 pm
My computer worked fine until my wife deleted some files in registry to clear a virus. Now after typing the password the computer starts to load then logs straight back out again to password prompt. It’s a Toshiba satellite A25-S207. I’d be grateful for any assistance.
April 3rd, 2006 at 9:41 pm
Hi Steve,
You can try to boot the laptop in Safe mode and then use the system restore utility. Try to revert the operating system before the time when your wife deleted files. It is just a guess and I’m not sure if you will be able to login in safe mode.
To access the system restore utility go to: Start-All Programs-Accessories-System Tools-System Restore.
You can also try Last Know Good Configuration option.
To access the boot menu you have to restart the laptop and press on the F8 key as soon as Toshiba logo appears. After that you can choose to boot you computer in Safe mode or boot it to Last Known Good Configuration.
April 4th, 2006 at 5:53 pm
CJ
thanks for all the help I did disassemble the Tecra again and this time I removed the power card and reattached it to the system board. After reassemble it had the correct led lights for charging, the then when I tried to power up it gave me a new led error code. The new one is (read backwards) is 10110001 which translates to 177 and B1. Would you look in the tecra manual for the error code translation? Thanks dude.
Tamsey
April 4th, 2006 at 6:49 pm
Tamsey,
There is no such a code like B1. Check it again. Emailed to you.
April 4th, 2006 at 8:52 pm
[...] Why Toshiba Tecra TE2100 laptop locks up or will not boot at all? [...]
April 11th, 2006 at 1:42 pm
I have a toshiba tecra m2v-s310
The problem i am having is after running my laptop for about an hour or two it freezes up. I dont move it or anything. I was wondering if you have seen this before and if there is anything i can do about it. When it freezes up it will show the screen but nothing responds, or if i hard shut down then go to start it back up it will freeze and still show the boot screen. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
April 11th, 2006 at 10:14 pm
Hey Jason,
If your laptop freezes up after an hour or two after you turn it on then it might be a heat related issue. Check the heatsink first, clean it up if it is clogged with lint. To apply new thermal grease on the CPU, you have to remove the top cover assembly. Also I would check the hard drive. It is possible the hard drive fails when it is getting hot. One more thing is to check the laptop memory. If the memory slot on the bottom is not taken already, try to move the main memory to this slot. The main memory is located under the keyboard and it’s possible that the memory slot or the memory module itself fails when it is getting hot. If both memory slots are taken, try to remove the memory sticks one by one and see if fixes the problem.
Here is Toshiba Tecra M2 laptop disassembly guide. You can use this guide if you want to apply new thermal grease yourself. Also this guide will help you to remove the main memory from under the keyboard.
April 12th, 2006 at 4:15 am
i reformated HDD of my TE2100 TECRA laptop and afetr that when i tried to reinstall window xp proffessional..problem which i faced are.
1, installation process become very very slow
2, after window installed the processing was and is very very slow
plz help me how to fix the problem
** RAM and hdd i cheked they r absoluotly fine
regards
April 12th, 2006 at 9:19 pm
Hey Mohsin,
Do you have enough RAM installed? I would suggest at least 256MB. Check if the CPU heatsink is clogged or if the CPU cooling fan actually spins. It is possible that the CPU overheats and runs slower, making the entire system to slow down. If you have original restore CDs, try to install OS from them and see if it makes any difference. Check the hard drive again. Sometimes it doesn’t work properly even if it passed the hard drive test.
April 13th, 2006 at 12:22 pm
My Toshiba Tecra TE 2100 is having the third issue: Laptop will not boot at all. There is no power or power LED blinking. There is no hard drive activity. There is no external or internal video.
I hyave a computer tecnhinican over at my house now, who just tried to reseat the powerboard, but it still didnt work. Are there any other things we can try?
Thanks
April 13th, 2006 at 12:27 pm
Hey Connor,
Did the technician check the AC adapter, may be it’s dead?
April 13th, 2006 at 12:31 pm
We tried tusing just the battery, and then just the AC adapter to power it up. All we can get out of it is just flashing orange light.
Thanks
April 13th, 2006 at 12:38 pm
If you reseated the power board and it didn’t help, then most likely the system board and the power board have to be replaced. The problem occurs because of a bad connection between the system board and the power board. I always quote to my customer both parts because you never know witch one is causing the problem.
Good luck.
April 13th, 2006 at 12:40 pm
Alright, thanks for the fast reply, Ill look into getting new parts
April 13th, 2006 at 8:46 pm
Here’s something new:
I just went to try to turn it on, and it did..but only for about a second. It came up with the Toshiba start screen (like it alwawys does) but then it turned off and went back to flashing orange. Does this mean that it has a bad connection or what?
Thanks a million,
Connor
April 13th, 2006 at 9:01 pm
Yes, it looks like a bad/defective connector. At first, you cannot start it one-two times a week, then once a day and finally not at all.
I would think twice before I invest any money into a failed Toshiba TE2100. I’ve seen a lot of laptops coming back for repair with the same problem a few months later after we replaced the system board and the power board.
April 13th, 2006 at 9:10 pm
Alrighty, thanks
About how much do you think it would cost to fix it?
April 13th, 2006 at 9:16 pm
If you take it to a Toshiba repair center it would approximately cost you:
$280 USD for the system board
$240 USD for the power board
Plus labor and tax.
April 13th, 2006 at 9:17 pm
Oh wow
I bought this on eBay for around $430, so I guess it really isnt worth fixing. Thanks for all your help.
April 22nd, 2006 at 1:13 pm
HI.
I have a Satellite A75, out of warranty, of course. When it’s turned on, it begins to boot and can usually get to the desktop and then the screen freezes with colored lines. It usually stays on for >1 minute before this happens. Everything pointed towards a video problem and I have gone through 4 motherboards purchased on ebay trying to fix this! My computer tech. finds each one doing the same thing. What is going on???
Thank you very much,
Joseph Henson
April 22nd, 2006 at 1:57 pm
Hey Joseph,
Here are some tips on troubleshooting laptop video problems. First of all, if you experience the same problem with 4 different motherboards then I’m 99.9% sure that it is not a motherboard problem.
I would try the following troubleshooting steps:
1. Connect the laptop to an external monitor and see what video output you get on the external monitor. Is it freezing too?
2. Boot the laptop in the safe mode. If you get a good video output is the safe mode, then most likely it is just a software problem. You can try to reload the operating system back to factory settings from a restore DVD (backup all important data before you run the restore DVD).
3. Disconnect the display from the system board and try to start the laptop only with an external monitor attached. If you get a good video output, then most likely the display assembly is causing the problem.
4. Test the memory modules if you have any extra memory modules installed.
5. Try to start the laptop without the wireless card installed. Sometimes a bad wireless card can cause very strange laptop problems.
By the way, have you tried to reinstall the video driver?
April 22nd, 2006 at 2:24 pm
CJ,
Thanks. The external monitor test yields the same results: lines. How do I reinstall the driver? I only have a few seconds before it freezes up on me.
joseph
April 23rd, 2006 at 10:36 am
OK, Here’s what I’ve tried so far.
1. External monitor-lines
2. Boot in Safe Mode-lines
3. Boot in bios- lines
4. disconnect wireless card-lines
5. 3 motherboards-lines!!!!!
Wow, should I just dig a hole and gently place it in?
Joseph
April 23rd, 2006 at 11:01 pm
Joseph,
It’s a very weird problem! I would suspect the system board first, because it displays lines on the LCD and the external monitor. But you say that the board was replaced 3 times. Weird!!! You can try to take the laptop apart completely and assemble it on the bench, without the laptop case. With Toshiba Satellite A75 you will only need the system board and the CPU with heatsink and fans attached. The board already has an integrated memory module. After that connect it to the external monitor and turn it on. You should be able to get Toshiba welcome screen. If you still get the same lines then it could be the CPU problem. I have never seen before a CPU causing lines on the screen.
April 24th, 2006 at 9:12 am
CJ,
Guess what, last night I went for it with one last board and whalaa, a fully functioning A75 again. No lines, etc. The only thing was the AC seems to have a short or something. Could be the power cable, we’ll see. Functions beautifully on the battery. After all this trouble, I’m a happy camper. Thanks for all your help.
Joseph, VA
April 25th, 2006 at 6:55 am
hi there. any advice for someone who didn’t keep track of which screws gp where? i thought they were all alike, but i see there are actually four different lengths plus the hex screws. any advice is much appreciated.
cathi
April 28th, 2006 at 11:01 am
[...] Toshiba Satellite Pro 6100 disassembly guide will help you completely take apart the notebook to remove and replace the system board, the power board and the video board. Toshiba Satellite Pro 6100 notebook has some known problems very similar to Toshiba Tecra TE2100. Overtime the video card pops up from the connector on the system board causing unpredictable video problems. If you experience a video problem try to press on the video board so it makes a better connection with the system board. Also you can experience a problem with starting the laptop. When you press on the power button the laptop will not start and the power LED flashes orange. Most of the time it happens because of a poor connection between the power board and the system board. In some cased you can fix the problem by reseating the power board. If reseating the board doesn’t help then the system board and the power board has to be replaced. One more problem – you can get the CMOS (RTC) battery error each time you turn on the laptop. If replacing the battery doesn’t fix the problem then it might be also caused a bad connection between the power board and the system board. Try to reseat the power board. [...]
April 28th, 2006 at 1:33 pm
Hi there,
Thank you very much for the disassembly guide for TE2100. Mine had the “fainted screen” problem. (you know, the screen blanks, and if you look really closely, it’s actually fainted). I’ve sent my laptop to the repair centre twice for this problem, and they’ve replaced the video board, but nonetheless the problem is still recurring.
After searching around the net, I’ve come across some articles pointing that the problem might be with the FL invertor. There’s a guide on how to pull out the FL inverter on TE8100. I wonder is that the same for TE2100? I’d appreciate it if you could answer my question.
Kevin
April 28th, 2006 at 6:35 pm
Kevin,
Removing and replacing the FL inverter board from Toshiba TE2100 would be almost the same as for Toshiba Tecra 8100. The only difference would be:
1.Toshiba TE2100 LCD mask is secured by four screws. Two on the top and two on the bottom of the LCD mask. You’ll find these screws under the screw seals.
2. The FL inverter board in Toshiba TE2100 is secured by one silver screw in the middle.
That’s it.
May 3rd, 2006 at 10:33 am
I have a TE2100 and the cooling fan will not come on. I have tested the fan with an external 5V source and it runs fine. Could you tell me what might be the problem with the fan control.
Thank You
May 3rd, 2006 at 8:49 pm
Trevis,
The fan controlling circuit is located somewhere on the system board and I have no idea where it is. Just in case try to upgrade or reflash the BIOS. It is possible that the BIOS got corrupted somehow and doesn’t interact properly with the fan. That’s just a guess.
May 28th, 2006 at 10:09 am
In your introductory comment, you have made several sweeping statements that would otherwise make people believe that these machines ALL have inherent faults.
I would like you to be more clear about the number of units with problems in comparison to the number of units in service.
I would also like you to clarify the specific Toshiba part number which you refer to because different units were assembled in different locations and furthermore, it could be that you have experienced a specific batch.
There is also the fact that certain machines released in North America are released in other countries with different builds ie Satellite Pro 1900 and not to mention that this particular model was released as both a TECRA and Satellite Pro with different builds.
I believe that you are entitled to offer advice, however, the advice has to be accurate and not by making generalisations or sweeping statements that make it seem that every one of Toshiba’s TE2100 series has an inherent fault.
That is how I read it, and that is certainly far from the truth.
We service many Laptops but would never say that one particular model had a common regular issue, only that some models have a likely issue if and when certain traits are evident in the unit’s functionality (or non)
As with any laptop, you may get a common problem when there is a problem such as IBM T22 DC Jack failures are more common than motherboard failures but people assume it is the board.
It could well be your intentions are good but your choice of wording could be extending a direputable message about what would otherwise be a reputable machine
Thank you
May 29th, 2006 at 7:44 pm
Hi Adam, I don’t think cj has done anything wrong. In fact I have two te2100 which performs the same way as the question item 3 and 4 mentioned(which makes me crazy). I would be very keen on trying what CJ has suggested. However if Adam knows anything better, he is more than wellcome to raise his advice. we don’t want someone does nothing but just discourage good people’s warmheart service.
May 31st, 2006 at 12:19 am
The LCD screen on my TE 2100 flickers when I turned it on. However, if I moved the cover up and down, it will sometime return to normal. It has been like that for quite some time until two weeks ago, it starts to fickering becomes non-stop.
When I connect to an external monitor, everything is perfect. Can someone advise me on this. Thanks
May 31st, 2006 at 1:10 pm
Hey Robin,
It is possible that the screen flickers because a connection inside the display assembly is loose. How it flickers? The backlight turns on and off or the data on the screen is on and off? If you loosing the backlight, I would try to reconnect cables on the FL inverter board firs. If you loosing the data, them I would try to reconnect the video cable on the back of the LCD screen and on the system board.
There is a possibility that the hardware is failing (FL inverter, backlight bulb or the video cable). In this case the hardware parts have to be replaced. It’s impossible to say witch part is failing. To narrow it down we usually replace above mentioned parts one-by-one with our test equipment until the problem disappears.
June 5th, 2006 at 10:25 am
#57 I stated that there is nothing wrong with providing advice, however, the opening blurb has made it sound as though ALL TE2100 have an inherent problem.
This is NOT the case.
I asked them to quantify their statements, they have not done so.
We have sold hundreds of these in the past both as new machines as well as used machines.
The problem rate is insignificant probably 3%-5% of the pool of units handled but who knows how insignificant to those that were built and YES he has identified common problems when there are such problem evident within the small percentage.
I was not happy with the representation as if to say that all of these models had THIS problem – that is how I read it, that is how others will read it.
He stated “As a laptop repair technician I see a lot of different problems with this model” and that is a total discreditation of the unit.
Well as a laptop repair technician myself, I DO NOT see a lot of problems with this unit . However whenever a problem unit has been encountered, there is uniformity in the issue but there is no MORE problems inherent with this model than any other make or model of laptop produced.
A statement has been made and I want quantification and clarification so that any person out there pondering the purchase of one of these units in the second hand market does not get misinformation or misrepresentation to make them shy away from purchase of the unit on the basis that they read that this model is riddled with problems.
I don’t think there is any complexity in responding to the questions raised and I still await a response and preferably a correction to the terminology and wording used
June 5th, 2006 at 11:13 pm
Hey Adam,
First of all, thanks for your comments. I didn’t really intent to say that ALL TE2100 laptops are bad. I just wanted to share my observations based on my experience. I’ve changed “several sweeping statements” so people will not assume that ALL TE2100 laptops have inherent faults.
I didn’t quantify “my statement” because we do not sell laptops, we repair them. We see only failed laptops. I cannot give you a ratio of failed laptops to not failed laptops. From my own observation, about 80% of all TE2100 laptops I had to repair had one of the above listed problems and laptops were 2-3 years old. I guess this number is high because our customer has their own technicians and they can handle simple stuff like failed memory or failed hard drive themselves. They gave us only laptops that they were not able to repair.
June 17th, 2006 at 2:47 am
Hi. My TE2100 is facing one of the problems you guys have mentioned — the most left LED keeps on flashing (orange in colour) after I have pluged it out from the sockets (when someone expeled me from a room few days ago. yes it has been flashing for a few days). I read some of your comments and said it was due to a poor connection of blah blah blah board and blah blah blah board. Sorry I ain’t really sure how to fix it. Can anyone give me some advise?
June 17th, 2006 at 5:27 am
my te 2100 (purchased new) had a HD failure (travelstar) and then the flashing power light (apparently syndrome),i replaced the motherboard not knowing about the power board contact issue,and it has worked fine for my son for the last 6 months,it now suddenly displays the same flashing power light issue,i will try the suggested fix from this valuable resource,then i think ill cut my costs and bin it thankyou for the efforts o this site,regards.lee in Australia
June 18th, 2006 at 5:43 am
I have a te2100 with some probs, the LCD flickers back and forth from crystal clear to what looks like safe mode colors? then the screen starts to jump around then it clears up like nothing is wrong then a few minutes later it starts up again this thing had been nothing but a headache i used the step by step instructions to take the cover off and check and see if the monitor ribbon was loose but it wasnt when i put it back together the mouse buttons on the laptop didnt work anymore? and the screen kept freaking out, Now when i plug in my monitor in to it its great, works just fine no probs at all does anyone have a guess on whats wrong with this thing and maybe a solution other than buy a new laptop… Thanks for any help, Smokie
June 18th, 2006 at 9:14 pm
Smokie,
Check if the keyboard is connected properly to the motherboard. A bad connection might cause the mouse not to work. Also check if it is not disabled in software settings. Check if you can use a combination of keyboard keys to disable/enable the mouse (something like Fn+F9). I think that the video cable in your laptop is bad and video card is OK, because you have a normal video on the external monitor.
June 19th, 2006 at 3:03 am
Ty CJ thats a pretty cheap fix…i will give it a shot
June 20th, 2006 at 6:43 pm
Hi. I’ve just had my 2yr out of wty TE2100 had the pcb replaced for FREE! The service shop diagnosed it and if it matched their criteria for the rtc ‘fault’ they would replace the pcb for free, but if it wasn’t the ‘fault’ they would charge me $75 just for looking at it or $450 if I wanted to replace the PCB. Luckily it matched their ‘fault’. Now I’ve just bought a Broadcom mini-pci 11g wlan for it, still good enough to run xp sp2, office, ie, etc.
June 21st, 2006 at 1:41 pm
Congratulations John,
I didn’t know that you can fix this problem for FREE.
BTW, I found that Toshiba lists only 802.11b wireless card for this model. Did you get your 11g working? Did you find correct drivers?
June 24th, 2006 at 12:09 am
It is just a generic Broadcom mini pci wlan card. You don’t have to buy a toshiba branded one (i.e. selling an arm to get one). It is $189 for a Toshiba 11b one, and I bought my 11g one for $65. Just make sure you find a place that will let you try the card in your notebook first so you can verify that it works. Also its easier if your notebook has the antenna there already, saves you having to wire that up.
June 25th, 2006 at 1:56 pm
Hi CJ2600, I am having the boot up issue on my TE2000 (starts intermittently). Not having found any mention of the TE2000 on this site, I am wondering how close the TE2000 and TE2100 are in terms of design, assembly and hence disassembly. In particular the reseating the power board seems like it could fix the symptoms my laptop is displaying.
June 25th, 2006 at 9:24 pm
[...] Disassembly guide for Toshiba TE2000 should be sufficiently close to Toshiba TE2100, I guess even the same. We noticed that most of the time a laptop fails on boot up because of a faulty connection between the power board and the system board. You can try to reconnect the power board to the system board. Occasionally reseating the power board fixes the problem. I have posted some tips for faulty Toshiba TE2100 laptops here. Posted by Laptop Freak on June 25th, 2006 Filed in Laptop Boot Problem, Power Problem [...]
June 26th, 2006 at 8:33 pm
Update (to save CJ having to answer this again). I have taken theTE2000 apart following the TE2100 guide and had success. There are a couple of differences – mainly things that the TE2000 doesn’t have, like the wifi card or the yellow ribbon cable going to the graphics card which aren’t there either. Also, there is one screw at step 17 that holds down the top cover which is mentioned above already. Basically, be gentle and if it doesn’t want to move look again, more closely…
I am following up a suggested fix I found which goes into remelting solder on some motherboard pins.
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au.....m?t=499023
Laptopfreak doesn’t deal with modifying actual components so don’t bother CJ with questions about this. I’ll probably end up trying it and post back here with how it worked (or not).
Digikiwi
June 27th, 2006 at 4:05 pm
It’s fixed. Thanks you so very much CJ2600 for your detailed guide. I not only saved a heap of money but also learned a whole lot about my laptop.
For anyone else with a TE2000, I’ll try to detail what differences you might expect to find. Bear in mind that my laptop might have slight differences from yours for whatever reason, but this ought to be a reasonable guide. Also if CJ2600 finds the need to correct any of the below – I’d put my money on his opinion…
Notes for TE2000 users following the TE2100 pictorial dis-assembly guide:
Step 9: This screw was a T7 security Torx screw requiring a Torx screw bit which is hollow. It might be a different screw on your machine but be prepared.
Step 10: Not applicable, the TE2000 was not usually shipped with a wireless card.
Step 17: There is one extra screw securing the top cover assembly to the left of the rights-side LCD mount
Step 19: Not applicable – hardware not installed
Step 20: Not applicable – hardware not installed. There is no VGA board.
Step 24: Pay particular attention – From my understanding it is the small white 80-pin connector between the motherboard and the powerboard that tends to fail, labeled a design flaw by some authors. You can see it on picture 24 on the motherboard immediately to the left of the top-left side of the battery bay.
I found my fix by airbrush cleaning it up and making sure this connection was really well seated. This is the one that one forum thread talks about soldering (see post 72).
Thanks again CJ2600 – you made it possible.
Good luck to all who venture into this journey
, I hope this post helps a little
Digikiwi
June 28th, 2006 at 9:17 am
Hey Digikiwi,
Thank you for a nice writeup. Good luck.
I’m glad that my disassembly guide helped to fix your problem and save some money.
June 29th, 2006 at 12:13 am
thank you very much. My TE2100 got the same problem. I will try to fix it by myself later.
June 29th, 2006 at 12:52 pm
Where did you find a replacement RTC battery for this model? I can’t find one anywhere!
June 29th, 2006 at 1:53 pm
Jarrod,
Google for it by the part number. V000010510
July 2nd, 2006 at 5:53 pm
Hi.
I have a TE2100, like most of the peeps here and I’ve had it for 4 years now. trust me, it was a disaster. I’ve changed my system board and power board at least 5 times (Thank God it was still covered by the 3 yr warranty). and now, the same LED/doesnt boot up problem comes back again. I’m just wondering if i’ve “overused” the laptop? i do keep my laptop on for more than 10 hours either due to work or cos of gaming.
i’ve read here that it’s due to overheating, so I’m asking if there is any way to prevent it frm overheating.. Mine’s a 1.8GHz model with upgraded ram of 768MB…
July 3rd, 2006 at 1:42 am
cj2600, I have disassemble my laptop and found the RTC battery. But do you think replacing the RTC battery will help the unbootable problem? Someone said it won’t help. Is it true?
July 4th, 2006 at 9:21 am
Lee,
I tried to fix a RTC battery error on this model by replacing the battery itself and it didn’t work for me. I’m not sure if it will work in your situation.
July 7th, 2006 at 2:47 am
Thanks cj2600, I think I will just disassemble the laptop and sell all the parts. It’s no point to spend the money again to fix the RTC battery as the LCD screen is already damaged and I am using a LCD monitor previously before it become unbootable.
August 30th, 2006 at 1:54 am
Re: posts #7 & #8
I have the same problem with the vertical lines, etc. I connected an external monitor and it had the same problem so I assume the cause is the video card. I will dismantle it tonight and let you know how I go.
Thanks.
August 31st, 2006 at 3:42 am
I am quite amazed to find that weird TE2100 models have same symptons. I have bought a secondhand one last two weeks ago. It was working fine for the first week except it had a lock up problem when moved and that stupid RTC battery issue. And I am experiencing more crazy problems starting from the second week.
1.) DVD/CDRW drive is working (spinning) constantly without any discs in it. I can see the led light on the drive is lit and when ejected the drive, I can see the motor was spinning until it was ejected.
2.) Occasionally, the LCD’s backlight was off an on every two or three hours at first. And later, it is happening every minute and then constantly off and on.
I was quite annoyed with the issues and tried to figure out what is happening by taking the laptop part’s apart and disconnect/reconnect every modules, connectors and boards. It didn’t work on the first attempt. But the LCD’s backlight flickering issue is no more happening after a few disconnect/reconnect to the ribbons and the boards again. The DVD/CDRW drive spinning without any disc mystery also ended.
However, the CMOS RTC issue still exists. On top of that, my laptop hang every few hours or so. Even worst, it hangs every few minutes after the first hang. I had removed the CPU’s heatsinks and reapply the new thermal compound. But it is still happening. And it is quite strange to notice that the heat generating is not much from the CPU itself but from the location where the gaphic board is located (just above the main memory’s location.) There is a chip there underneath the graphic board too covered by a heat cover. (I think it is a northbridge but not sure). I removed the heat cover from that chip and reapplied the new thermal compoud there too. But it didn’t help either.
And I started searching on the internet for those mysteries and found this site. Quite amaze to know about how similar problems with this stupid TE2100 models. I really liked Toshiba laptops before. But with this model I really dissapointed with TOSHIBA products now. Especailly, this particular TE2100. It really sucks. I can say that, the good name of TOSHIBA models are only back in the history of it’s old pentium series with gray solid books. I like them really much and I still have Satellite 220CDS with me which is still working. Well, anyway, that was just off topic and I really in need of a help for the current problems which I am facing with the devil TE2100 of mine.
I will try to reseat back the power board again to check whether it fix for the frequent lockup issue. Will post here again if it works. (But actually, I already did that just a few minutes ago before getting to this website and notice about that stupid mysteries with TE2100.) Now, I can pay more attention to this particular power board and check.
September 2nd, 2006 at 10:08 pm
I can’t get the DVD-ROM drive out. Any tips? Do you just remove all the screws and tug like hell?
September 2nd, 2006 at 10:24 pm
Nope,
You don’t have to remove all the screws. All you have to do is slide the DVD drive lock into UNLOCKED position and remove the drive. If the lock doesn’t move, remove one screw securing the lock (the screw is located on the left side).
September 2nd, 2006 at 10:37 pm
Hey Aung,
When you disassemble the laptop, take a closer look at the connectors on the power board and the system board. You should use a magnifying glass. Check the pins. I believe that the problem with the connection happens because some pins are not connected properly to the motherboard, there could be a microcrack in the solder between the pin and the motherboard. In the latest motherboard revisions Toshiba fortified the connector on the motherboard by applying some kind of glue on it.
September 8th, 2006 at 11:58 am
cj2600, is it possible to upgrade the graphics card on the TE2100?
Does it come in mini AGP or something like that?
September 8th, 2006 at 12:28 pm
Wayne,
The video card in TE2100 is a removable separate module but I don’t think that you can upgrade it. From my knowledge, there is only one type of the video card for TE2100.
September 8th, 2006 at 12:31 pm
Thanks cj2600.
My TE2100 also has the problem of shutting down suddenly without any warning. Its not very frequent though.
Guess I have to clean the heatsink.
September 8th, 2006 at 7:05 pm
hi there. my laptop is not running like it should be or to be more specific, it’s not running at all! i try to turn it on and then it turns on for like.. 5 seconds and turns back off. it’ll turn on every once in a blue moon! and when it does turn on.. it turns back off sometimes so i have to keep pressing the on button over and over again until it turns on without shutting off. what’s wrong with my laptop??
September 10th, 2006 at 8:53 pm
Amanda,
In order to successfully start, any laptop needs 3 main components – motherboard, processor and memory. From these three components, the memory module fails more often then others and when it fails a laptop can experience an intermittent start up problem as you mentioned in your comment.
Try to reseat the memory module, move it into another slot. Test the memory module with Memtest 86+ utility and if it fails the test for a few times, replace it. That’s what I would try first.
September 14th, 2006 at 2:41 am
What might be the system hang problems after a few minutes of the system start up? It seems like the overheat issue. I even applied the new thermal compounds but still it wasn’t the solution. Does it still the issue of the connector problem between the motherboard and the powerboard?
September 14th, 2006 at 6:39 pm
Aung,
It’s hard to say from your description. It could be a hard drive issue (test hard drive), an overheating problem (check if the fan spins), a bad connection between the system board and the power board (read the post), a software issue, etc…
September 16th, 2006 at 11:21 am
CJ2600
I read your post #37 dated April 13,2006 with interest.
I own a TE2100 TECRA. I bought it from internet last October.
The ad said factory warranty was available so I called and bought extended 1 year warranty for 116.10 that was billed thru my Capital One Card. In February the problem you mentioned and I took it to the recommended Toshiba repair service in St. Louis. The tech told me that the condition I mentioned was a known problem and that it would probably need a power board and a main board. The next day he called me and said I had no warranty.
I paid him 80.00 for checking out the laptop and had him return it to the company in California that I bought it from.
They also took it to Toshiba repair in CA. and were told that there was no warranty. They did replace the power board and ran the unit for about a week before sending it back to me along with a bill for 100.00.
I used it for about a week and it lost power again the same as before. The green power light was blinking and it was dead.
I removed the battery and discharged the system as instructed by Toshibas on first go round. The unit booted up and ran for about ten minted when it died again.
I have called every division of Toshiba and get the run around.
They tell me to write letter to Capital One requesting my money back.
WOW !!
I own quite a few Toshiba items and I wonder if you have any advice.
What would the cost of new system board and a Power board be with labor?
I also noted your #40 post. Should I give up and use it for a door stop? Ha Ha
If I knew who was CEO of Toshiba I would ship it to him with a very discouraging letter.
September 17th, 2006 at 5:54 pm
D Cook,
I think that you should call not to Capital One, but to the company who sold you the warranty on this laptop. It sucks man! I would fight for my money.
The repair would be expensive. As I mentioned before, there is no way to say witch part is failing – the power board or the system board and if you take to a Toshiba repair center they will recommend to replace both parts. To find how much it would cost to buy parts, you can search on Google by the part number. System board: V000010780. Power board: V000010840. And do not forget to add some labor, probably 2 hours at 60-70$/hour. After a quick search I found the system board (exchange) for about $300 and the power board (exchange) for about $160, I guess you can find it cheaper but not much. If you add labor, it takes you to $600. For this money I can buy a brand new laptop with 1 year warranty and much better and faster then Tecra TE2100. Remember, that you cannot buy new parts for TE2100, they would be used – “factory reconditioned”. That means, that you get not more then 30 days warranty and after that they can fail again.
October 8th, 2006 at 2:42 am
Thanks cj2600, the information you have provided and your website has been extremely helpful, my TE2100 recently would not start due to a power problem, a 72h error.
With your information and from the Whirlpool thread posted by digikiwi:
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au.....m?t=499023
I managed to fix it by soldering pins 41-45 together and reheating pin 46 on the system board connector.
One question about removing the CPU, you indicate on your website that you slide the CPU to the right, I cannot remove mine no matter what I do, I have undone the locking screw and the socket moves back a millimeter or so, but the chip doesn’t move at all. Do they use some sort of glue to hold the chip in?
October 8th, 2006 at 11:24 am
Nnewton,
A red arrow points to the CPU so you can see where it’s located.
After you unlock the CPU socket on the motherboard by turning the screw into “open” position, lift up the CPU by edges. There should be any problem. There is no glue to hold the chip in.
Be careful, the CPU pins can be easily damaged. When you put it back, make sure that the CPU is positioned correctly. There is only one correct way to put the CPU back into the socket. Make sure that pin layout on the CPU matches holes layout on the socket. When you put the CPU back in place, it should fall down the socket without any pressure. Do not forget to lock the socket after the CPU is back in place or your laptop will not boot.
October 11th, 2006 at 7:42 pm
Do not waste time in fixing the problem in Toshiba TE2100. This model has a known problem in the motherboard and the power supply. Our company has over ten units of this model , they all finished not working after 1or 2 years. The Toshiba has a special warranty on this model to replace the motherboard free. But we have a few unit busted again after 2-3 replacement of the motherboard. They all end up sitting in our junk bay. So even if you can fix it , it won;t last long. As a result, our company has moved away from Toshiba laptop computers.
October 17th, 2006 at 12:38 am
Hi CJ!
I have a Toshiba 9000/9100, and it as well is only blinking the power light -> no boot. Taking the battery out does not help. Do you have any suggestions for repair for this kind of device?
October 18th, 2006 at 8:13 pm
Manne,
Toshiba Tecra 9100 motherboard actually consists of two different boards: the I/O board and the system board. Take a look at this Tecra 9100 disassembly guide. The I/O board is pictured on the step 17, the system board on the step 20. These two boards are connected by a long narrow connector; you can see this connector on the top of the system board on the step 20. Overtime the screws on the laptop get loose and I/O board (top board) can pop up from the system board (bottom board). As a result the I/O board will not make a good connection with the system board and laptop will not boot up.
When you turn on the laptop and get a flashing orange light it’s usually indicates a major power failure on the motherboard. In Tecra 9100 in might happen because of a bad connection between the I/O board and the system board. I don’t know if you want to try fixing the laptop yourself because it requires laptop disassembly. You can remove the top cover (as shown on the step 10) and push on the I/O board in the area of the connector, to make sure that it’s properly connected to the system board. I’m not sure if it will help you, but that’s what I would try first.
October 18th, 2006 at 10:14 pm
Hi!
Can anyone translate what it means when a Tecra 9000 flashes:
Long, short, long, short, long, short, long, short. It won’t start. It was just laying on the table… I am sorry for posting this on the 2100 thread, but I’m desperate…
October 18th, 2006 at 10:34 pm
Manne,
You can write this code as 10101010. When the power LED flashes and you want to find what it means, you believe (do not remember exactly) that you have to revert the code and then translate it to HEX. So it would be 01010101=55. Right?
There is a translation for this error and it says: C5V voltage is less than 4.5V when the computer is starting. But I have no idea what it’s all about and what C5V is. I hope it help.
Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.
October 23rd, 2006 at 6:17 am
please help me , i have a laptop tosiba te2100, and nothing hapened when i try to start him, only theyellow power led flashes like this: short-short-long-short-short-long-short-short. anybody can help me what;s mean this code?
i reset the power board but nothing happens .
thank in advance!!
October 24th, 2006 at 11:19 pm
OK. I just disassembled and assembled the laptop. The screws were loose and I tightened them, BUT no help…
Still the same blink.
Could the C5V refer to the BIOS battery or something? Or could the power source just be bad?
October 27th, 2006 at 11:25 pm
Toshiba satellite dynabook has a trouble of power,
the power cable indicator keep on flashing orange
pls help me rectifier it.
October 29th, 2006 at 10:57 pm
Sorry Issa,
I’ve never worked on Dynabook laptops.
November 6th, 2006 at 5:15 am
hey!
I need some help immediately. I’d set the password on my M35X Toshiba notebook. Then I wanted to delete it… I typed my old password and for the new one I press ENTER. While starting up the computer it demends the password but what password? The old one doesn’t work, pressing enter neither. I have no idea why it happened. I need to get to my Master dissertation… Please, help me!
November 8th, 2006 at 9:56 pm
CJ2600,
Good Day, I have here Toshiba Tecra 9100, I hope you could give me some tips or advice on how to fix this problem.
Problem #1: My winxp get hangs or freeze after 2 or 5 minutes. When it hangs or freeze I push the power buttom to shut it down and when I turn in on again it locks up or will not boot at all. But the A/C power, on/of light, main battery and hard disk lights up but no display and hard disk lights does not blink. Sometimes it display a blue screen after loading windows xp logo and the only message I can read is “physical memory dump” at the bottom of the message, it display so fast I can’t read the whole message.
Problem #2: I also noticed that the portion on the button where memory is located is hotter than the portion where cpu and video chip are located.
Problem #3: No audio even though it is installed in device manager and sound driver is updated to winxp sp1.
Problem #4: After Problem 1-3, I decided to disassemble the unit to clean, remove some dust and to replace the old thermal grease of the processor and video chip. I’m also looking for some leak capacitor or loose connection but I didn’t find one. After that I re-assemble it, do fresh installation of windows using recovery cd, I have notice that “NO AUDIO DEVICE” and the modem is not detected anymore. I tried to install sound driver and it says “driver not installed” and same with modem.
I have tried cleaning the flex cable of the sound board and culprit of the modem but still no luck. Do I have to resolder something here specially the soundcard IC, coz I have a friend familiar in replacing IC. Please help me to fix this problem, thank you!
November 9th, 2006 at 8:09 pm
Max,
I’ve seen this problem with Tecra 9100 sound before. I think you might have a failing I/O board, this board is shown on the step 14 of this disassembly guide. I’m not sure that you have a failed I/O board, but from my experience it’s very likely. Sorry man, I cannot give you a better advice because it’s impossible to troubleshoot the laptop just basing on your description.
November 10th, 2006 at 2:38 am
Sopunds like what happened to me, the entire XP operating system died without warning. I ended up running the XP disc, but didn’t get the downloads. It has just happened again. and I am looking for a 2nd hand boot disc (mine is lost). Prior to the crash, the system kept failing to recognise USB ports and Wireless Cards etc. So I have lost all of my information, and worse than that the time it takes to collect it.
November 11th, 2006 at 10:36 am
My TE2100 won’t boot. When I try to turn it on the all the LEDs light up as they should except for the HDD light. The LEDs do not flash. There are no POST beeps when I try to start up either.
The screen is black though I was having problems with it flashing so I reseated the FL invertor and the VGA card. I have also reseated the power card.
I have tried a known good HDD in the TE2100 but I get the same results. When I start the TE2100 without the HDD installed the HDD LED is lit but still no screen message or POST beeps.
November 17th, 2006 at 7:14 pm
cj2600,
My friend toshiba 9100 no boot at all and when you press the power on button the adaptor indicator blink into color orange. what is the meaning of this?
November 19th, 2006 at 7:43 am
cj2600,
the blinking error code is 01001011 and we find out that the voltage output of the adaptor is 18v. but in the label of the adaptor it says 15v 5a only.
November 22nd, 2006 at 12:11 am
Mhax,
Did you mean that the power LED on the laptop blinking orange? Usually a blinking power LED indicates a major power grid failure.
May be that’s your problem? If the laptop is labeled for 15V-5A, then you must use an adapter that outputs 15V, the amperage could be 5A or more.
November 22nd, 2006 at 2:26 am
My problem is on toshiba laptop satellite dynabook model ps181n-q6×0 that has stardby light blinks but does’t boot
December 1st, 2006 at 3:02 pm
I have just installed Windows XP with SP2 on Toshiba TE2000. Everything went well, except when the laptop boots, it takes very long time to get to the XP screen. I can hear the hard disk noise, then the striped bar appears, then it starts to cover the stripes from the left, chunk by chunk, until it is one whole bar and only then the Windows screen apears. The whole process takes almost 5 minutes. During that whole time I can hear the same sequence of the HD head. Can anyone help?
December 2nd, 2006 at 9:40 pm
I since ran the boot in Safe mode and found out that it pauses after loading the following drivers: drvmain.sdbm, compbatt.sys, BATTC.SYS, VolSnap.sys, Mup.sys and finally after alim1541.sys. Tried to play with msconfig – loading only basic config – no change. Reinstalled XP SP2 – no change. I am getting desperate. Please help!!
December 3rd, 2006 at 8:52 am
Hi CJ,
I have a TE2100 and I have this minor problem recently.
When I use my headphones, audio only comes out from the right side. I thought something was wrong with them, so I bought a new one. But the same problem occurs.
I tried the new headphones on another laptop, and it turns out that they are fine. So it is not the headphones’ fault. There is nothing wrong with the soundcard too; the audio works just fine when played from the speakers.
So I think something is wrong with the connection somewhere to the audio-out port.
Can you show me which part(s) might be loose and may need soldering?
Thanks.
December 3rd, 2006 at 3:00 pm
Es,
Test the hard drive. Download Hitachi drive fitness test utility and run an advanced test. This utility is free and I find it very reliable, works on most laptop drives. If the hard dive fails the test, probably you have a bad drive.
December 3rd, 2006 at 6:35 pm
Hi CJ,
Thanks for the suggestion. I downloaded the Hitachi utility and ran the advanced test. It came with a problem detected – disposition code 0×70. The manual tells that the drive can be erased and the problem can be fixed, but the utility will not erase non Hitachi/IBM drive. Is there a utility you can recommend to erase the Toshiba hard drive or should I give up and try to buy another disk drive?
December 3rd, 2006 at 6:49 pm
Hi CJ,
How silly of me. After I posted the previous comment, I restarted the laptop, removed the Hitachi CD ROM and to my surprise, the laptop started in no time, even after trying to find a CD ROM first. I then reconfigured the boot sequence to strat from HDD and it now starts in a matter of seconds every time. Some kind of magic?! Can I now trust the hard disk drive after Hitachi reported a problem? I am now totally confused.
December 3rd, 2006 at 9:34 pm
es,
Run the DFT utility 2-3 more times to confirm the hard drive failure. Probably the utility detects bad sectors and you can “fix” it for a while if you reformat the hard drive and reload the software, but from my experience bad sectors tend to multiply overtime.
It’s totally up to you. If you use the laptop just for entertainment like web browsing, email, youtube stuff, etc… then use is until the drive fails completely. If you use this laptop for business or other important stuff then I would go with a new drive.
December 3rd, 2006 at 10:47 pm
Wayne,
It’s possible that you have a faulty phone connector on the sound board. The sound board pictured on the step 24 in the lower left corner. I don’t know what is wrong, may be a bad connection, bad jack, or something else. In order to check the connection it’s necessary to remove the sound board.
December 4th, 2006 at 2:54 pm
I have a Toshiba Satellite A45 and a year after I got it , it started to to turn off. I know there is a class suite aganist certain laptops, but what about ones like mine??
Toshiba sucks!!
December 4th, 2006 at 9:02 pm
Hi CJ,
My laptop (Toshiba Satellite Model 3000-PS300L-04JKL
) is about two years old and I always use it with care but one
day the screen become blank with faint display. I power recycle it and it runs for a while and then video fails again. I connect an external mon and it can give normal picture.
I turn the brightness to highest level, the display can last longer or even does not drop. If I use a lower brightness, the display shutdown very soon even before Windows logo comes up. I check the close lid switch but cannot fiind any problem there.
The laptop warranty has lapsed and I ask a Toshiba repair shop but they are charging me high price to replace inverter. I am thinking if I can do the repair myself and also for coming future I can do the maintenance but I need to know if a correct spare part is available and the price before I proceed.
Do you think what problem is my laptop? If it is inverter problem, can you help to check the spare part no. for me. I check this on Ebay but the PC model no. given is not the same and I am not sure if I get the correct part no.
tks for your help.
Kevin
December 5th, 2006 at 7:05 pm
Hi Cj, I have an hp pavilion dv 4000 and it will not power up with the adapter. I t will when I take the battery out and recharge it in another unit and put it back in. The power adapter light is on so I know I am getting power from the wall but not into the laptop. Is there any hope? Thanx Rene
December 10th, 2006 at 2:11 am
I have a Toshba TE2100 that suddenly refuse to reboot. When I disassembled it I found that that the connector on the video board had worked loose (where the flat cable connects to the display unit). Where will be able to find a video board for the machine? Can I connect the machine to an extenal monitor? Do let me know.
Thanks,
Ssh
January 1st, 2007 at 11:49 pm
Hi,
I’m having real trouble with my Tecra TE2100. I’ve gone on a trip and when I got here my laptop was fine. I was watching a DVD and started to fall asleep so I keyboard short-cutted the computer to shut down – which it did. I woke up the next morning, turned on the computer, and found it started to boot, but then… the blue screen of death appeared: page fault in a non page area – caused by “ntfs.sys” (or something). I tried multiple times to turn it on, even in safe mode, (which it did multiple times), but not for long, then it physical dumped on me each time. Other times I got “win32k.exe” on the screen instead of “ntfs.sys”.
My system is XP Pro with SP1. I since installed SP2 and all the updates not long ago, so when the computer did decide to start up properly for me (without dumping after a few seconds) I decided I’d uninstall SP2, just to see if that were the problem. Unfortunately, during the end of the uninstallation, it did physical dump AGAIN.
Is this a video board problem or a software problem caused by SP2? I was thinking of opening the machine up myself, but a year ago I had the problem of no response at all (and ended up having to have the video board and motherboard replaced twice), so I am not keen on touching the insides unless I know what the problem might be. At least this time it’s still responsive when I press the power button, but it still dumps and errors on me. I tried removing the battery, but that did nothing. I don’t have my system discs on me nor the boot disc….
ANY HELP PLEASE? I’m frustrated and haven’t got to back up my hard drive!
January 3rd, 2007 at 8:05 pm
Katey,
First of all I would test the memory module and the hard drive. You can test the memory with Memtest 86+ utility, it’s free and accurate, I use it almost every day. If the memory fails to pass the test, replace it. You can test the hard drive with Hitachi drive fitness test utility. Even though it’s made for Hitachi hard drives, it works fine with other hard drives too. I also use this utility on daily bases.
If you need files from the hard drive very badly you can do this. Buy an external USB enclosure for laptop hard drives. You can find it in any computer store and it’s pretty cheap, I would say $15-25. Remove the hard drive from the laptop and install it inside the USB enclosure. Connect the enclosure to another working computer. If your hard drive is fine, it should be detected automatically and you’ll see it in My Computer. Access the drive and backup all personal files.
January 8th, 2007 at 4:35 am
Hello everybody!
Please help me, I have Tecra M3 failed – it is start booting and turning off in 1-2 minutes with orange LED blinking. (long-short-short-short-long-long-long-short) According previous comments – the errorcode is 71h.
Could somebody advice me – that is the mean?
Thank you!
January 15th, 2007 at 2:08 pm
My TE2100 is having the same problem of not booting up and the power light flashes orange. I’m in the process of disassembling it to reseat the power board to the system board. Just finished step 18. Just wondering, after step 18, can I skip some steps to go straight to reseating the power to the system board? Which step number actually reseats the power board to system board?
Thanks!
January 18th, 2007 at 12:13 am
Paul,
Sure, you don’t have to remove all these stuff, go straight to the step 23. It shows how to remove the power board.
January 21st, 2007 at 4:48 pm
Dear CJ,
I am pretty desparate – TE 2100 – no warranty – Boot problem -(power board – mainboard). ordered a new motherboard – still the same problem.
it would be great if you contacted me via email to help.
problem: pc crashed often and was finally dead. at least though, it gave me a green LED when connecting to AC. Now I have two motherboards and power boards (the old ones and the new/used ones that I ordered). both fail to show a green light when connecting the motherboard to the power. both do not boot. can you help?
thank you so much!
January 21st, 2007 at 6:05 pm
all is fine now – i am writing this with my TE 2100. maybe this is important for those sharing my problem: make sure the power board is not only cable wise connected to the motherboard but also plugged in with the connector on the other side of the board (a connection similar to the vga board slot)
January 24th, 2007 at 11:57 am
tecra 9100, over-temp problem. I’ve seen three machines go like this in as many weeks, & I’m not even a pc engineer- my experience is with broadcast equipment. but these lappies were going to be scrapped so I had a go at the problem…. first, it looks like the cpu fan has failed. you can’t hear it or feel it & the machine shuts down or freezes with a message about being too hot.
well.
the fans are fine. it’s the little IC near the fan connector- you can follow the trace back to it on the pcb. this is supposed to run the fan at full or half speed, depending on cpu temp. when it fails, no more fan. so I rewired the things & now the fan runs at full speed all the time…. happy laptops again.
hope this helps someone.
duncan.
January 30th, 2007 at 9:22 pm
I have had a Toshiba TE2100 model PT210A-006QT
for 4 years. This the 5th laptop I have owned. IT has been the worst performer in terms of failure of the keyboard, screen and power supply (incl external power supply). All these have been replaced. The most consistent problem is the screen which flickers. After many returns during the warranty period for “repair” it is now out of warranty and I will have to repair it myself. Once again the screen flicker has become an issue and (thanks to the advice on this thread) I am buying a new FL inverter. The part I ordered was V000010160. Due this being out of stock, the part I have been offered is P000327640.
Can anyone tell me if I should wait for the original part or is the alternate better?
Does anyone know why the inverters fail? Is it heat related? Would more ventilation help?
February 2nd, 2007 at 7:15 am
I have one Toshiba Tecra M3 laptop. When I switch the laptop in battery mode it stars and runs upto logon window then its CPU fan runs in high speed mode and system remains ideal. Another problem is when system is off and power is connected laptop show battery charging, after some hours green signal indicates battery full but whenever I switch on laptop in AC power it will just turns on and off immediately and red light blink in power show LED Please suggest me some idea which parts I need to check. Thank you
February 5th, 2007 at 10:29 pm
Nirajan,
It’s hard to say what is wrong, it’s necessary to test the laptop with a known good battery to narrow down the problem. I think you might have a problem with the motherboard.
February 6th, 2007 at 4:32 am
dear sir
problem -press power button system does not boot some time display come and system boot
Led indication–1 when i press power button every time power led blinks green
2 blinks all led one time but hard disk led does not blink
3 no display comes
Discription
I am having NEC versa m320 . when i press power button every time power led blinks green and test other llaptop some time boots display comes
when i am pressing power on button power led blink green but display comes nothing some times display comes and system boot normally and work . if i touch the ram slot then some time system boot but not all time
if i attemt to start the system then i success about 30 time and fails 70 time
other symtom — some time it show blue screen written some thing and off immidiatlly
pls tell me the exact solution
regards
prdeep shukla
February 10th, 2007 at 11:49 am
My laptop now boots up but lcd shows dark faint image… i think i need to replace the lcd inverter? or maybe even whole thing. i was wondering if someone can tell me the best place to get these parts?
February 23rd, 2007 at 12:15 am
Toshiba Tecra M4-S435 Tablet Fan/System Freeze Problem:
Hi – I have a Toshiba Tecra M4 Tablet PC. I’ve already had it repaired once (a new HDD and Cooling Fan were replaced). The problem I’m having is: At random (but regular) times, my computer will lockup (all mouse and keyboard inputs ignored) and the only thing I can do is manually hold the power on/off switch for 5 sec. to manually reboot. Upon reboot, same problem occurs. Every time the system locks up, the same thing happens each time: I hear the fan oscillating/really blowing air hard (but before the system locks up, I BARELY HEAR THE FAN AT ALL!!!). The problem usually doesn’t take long to happen at all (only 5 or 10 minutes of usage on a COOL LAPTOP) and happens with ANY running application (notepad for example) and happens when I’m NOT on the internet or on the Internet (doesn’t really matter), and happens with nothing external (ie. USB) attached.
What is causing this problem? Help Please!
Many, many thanks in advance!
Mike
February 25th, 2007 at 2:02 am
Mike,
I’m not sure what is wrong, it could be anything. Maybe overheating? Check the BIOS version installed on your laptop and if it’s outdated try upgrading the BIOS. Here’s a quoted from the change history for version 1.50:
I have no idea what it means but it could be somehow related to your problem.
February 26th, 2007 at 1:58 am
Hi CJ
I have Toshiba laptop M35X-S329. Recently authorised service provider replaced my mother board due to the DC jack issue. from that time when i reboot my laptop with the company given recovery DVD it is giving wrong machine error. I got the DMI updates from the service provider he asked me to reboot with that CD but my laptop is not recognising. Pls. let me know how i can update the DMI information with the serial no etc in my laptop.
Thanks in advance
Ramesh
February 26th, 2007 at 2:57 am
my toshiba laptop fails to show display after booting .
But when i gently press the underneath where the processor is located it shows display but when i release no display.what could be the problem??
February 27th, 2007 at 5:59 pm
I have the Tecra M2V-S310 and my fan is clogged but i have absolutely no idea how to get through to it.
March 3rd, 2007 at 8:44 am
Ramesh,
To update DMI on a Satellite M35X laptop you have to create a bootable floppy disk. This utility is available only for certified Toshiba technicians and you cannot download it from the Toshiba website.
I don’t know what kind of CD they sent to you. Take the laptop back to the service provider and they should fix it.
March 3rd, 2007 at 8:48 am
Trunnes,
It’s possible that the video cable is loose or the graphics card (if it’s a discrete module) doesn’t make a good connection with the motherboard. In cases like this I usually try reseating the video cable with graphics card first.
March 3rd, 2007 at 8:51 am
Thabiso,
Here’s a guide for taking apart a Toshiba Tecra M2 notebook. You can access the fan and blow off dust if you lift up the keyboard as it shown on the step 9.
March 3rd, 2007 at 8:43 pm
k, everytime I start up windows, there’s this blue screen that pops up everytime that says it’s dumping its physical memory or somethin’; what should I do? I have important files to retrieve, so how can I finally get to use my computer? #2; my taskbar always freezes up, I hate that, can someone help me please?
March 4th, 2007 at 8:52 am
Hi!
I would like to ask, maybe somebody know, why I keep hearing some small noises coming from my Toshiba Satellite Centrino. The switch for sound is off and the sound I hear is a small beep that’s coming from time to time. I barely can hear it but I’m afraid that’s a sign that should show me some problems, that maybe I have to fix.
Thank you,
Marius.
March 4th, 2007 at 1:46 pm
pommer,
First of all test the hard drive and memory. You can use Hitachi’s drive fitness test for testing the hard drive and Memtest86+ for testing the memory. You’ll find links to both utilities in the “Links” on the right side. It might be just a bad memory module.
you can buy an external USB hard drive enclosure, remove the hard drive from the laptop and install it inside the enclosure. After that you connect it to any working computer via an USB interface and if there is nothing wrong with the hard drive, it should be detected automatically. Now you can access the hard drive and recover all important files.
March 9th, 2007 at 8:49 am
I have Toshiba A75-S213. The laptop flashes a blue screen for 2 seconds after the Windows XP logo and starts rebooting. It keeps on doing this. The BIOS version on the laptop 1.50. I don’t know what else to do. I don’t want to format the HD yet. If I can recover some of the data from it. Do u know How I can fix this.
March 16th, 2007 at 7:42 am
hi yes I have a TE2100 also and am trying to figure out when i pull it up why it gives me a blank screen asking for Built-in HDD Password. I shut it down properly the last time i was on it but i never put any password for it.
March 20th, 2007 at 5:54 am
hi there i have a vga card problem on a te2100, i can get the screen to work with an external monitor attached but not with the internal, so i opened the laptop up and discovered that the connector for the flat ribbon on the vga card had complately come away from the circuit, can this be soldered back on, seems a waste of time buying a new card, just cos the solder has broke. also is it possible to upgrade this card, its only a 16mb, surely by now there’d be something a bit better that would fit the te2100??
March 20th, 2007 at 6:16 pm
Ian,
I don’t know, never down it before.
I believe there is only one video card (16MB) available for this laptop and you cannot upgrade it.
April 1st, 2007 at 1:17 am
need to unlock toshiba tecra m3 as it is asking 4 password pl help thk.
April 1st, 2007 at 8:53 am
I am trying to reload the toshiba software on my tecra 9000, but when I try to re-boot from the cd the computer displays “WRONG MACHINE”
April 2nd, 2007 at 8:54 pm
Tony Pearson,
You are getting “Wrong Machine” message because the laptop has incorrect DMI string. Go to Toshiba website and download DMI update utility for Tecra 9000 notebook. Run the utility and it should take care of your problem.
April 11th, 2007 at 4:11 am
Dear Sir,
I have a TE2100 laptop. My problem is that lots of upright yellow stripes show on screen, and now the laptop seems do not boot at all. I find your disassembly guide and want to disassembly my laptop. However I could not open http://www.irisvista.com/tech/.....2100_1.htm , Could you help me?
April 11th, 2007 at 11:05 am
Xiuqiang Jiang,
This link works fine for me and I can access the guide. Try again, it’s possible the web server was temporarily down.
Does anybody else experiencing a problem with this link?
April 11th, 2007 at 5:34 pm
Thanks for quick replying. It still do not work for me.The reason may be that I’m in a foreign country and could not be routed to your network .
April 11th, 2007 at 7:16 pm
Xiuqiang Jiang,
You’ll find all my disassembly guides here: http://www.irisvista.com/tech/
If you still cannot access the main page, there is something wrong with your Internet access. You should be able to access my site without any problem, as any other website.
April 14th, 2007 at 2:21 am
I tired your methods and seems i have more problems then most people . i noticed the laptop come on and i do get the check sum error i have reseated power and video to the main board a few time each and i also get lines or wierd objects on screen after playing with the video card sometimes it works without lines but the fan does not work at all , i happen to have a extra fan and tried it and still nothing does this mean the mainboard is definatly bad ? or could that portion be caused by the power board too . seems its not sencing the temperture to turn it on because when i shut it off the fan gets power for a sec only
April 16th, 2007 at 11:38 am
I have the tecra 9100 and have a similar problem. Boots but freezes after a few seconds or will try to boot but only a blank screen. Will freeze if i move the laptop. Im going to try and reseat tonight. Let you know of it works
April 18th, 2007 at 3:20 am
I have a laptop toshiba satellite 1900 that i cannot load winxp. Each time it tries to load kernel dll files it report an error. The screen shows many horizontal lines that makes me suggest a memory problem. When i try to disable CPU cashe one time those lines disappered but the problem reappears again. Please help
April 21st, 2007 at 4:54 am
Hi there!
First off, many thanks for this website. Really done a good job.
I have a TE2100 which is about 5 years old. During this time, I have had it sent out for repair about 4 times, each time the motherboard or system board was replaced for me. Now its out of warranty (of course – warranty for just 3 years only) and the same problem seems to have resurfaced.
I can be using it for long or short periods, it doesnt seem to matter. In fact I’m using it now. But at times, it will just shut down suddenly, and the power light will blink orange.
I have taken it apart using the guide, and put it back together. It worked better for about a day, but the next morning it shut down suddenly again, after using it for just 10 minutes.
I’m really clueless about what the problem!
(oh, and when i run it using just the battery, i’m not sure, but i feel its more stable – but it does shut down as well sometimes)
Any ideas??? Thanks!
April 22nd, 2007 at 10:09 pm
Kariuki,
Did you try replacing or at least reseating the memory module? It also could be a problem with the video card.
April 24th, 2007 at 7:39 pm
Jif,
Don’t you see a pattern? Probably it’s a faulty motherboard/power board again. I guess it’s time to think about a new laptop.
April 26th, 2007 at 3:22 pm
I have a tecra S1, which gives a blank screen and no HDD activity while booting. I have to pick the machine up by either the front right, or left back corner and carefully place it on the desk, then it boots most of the time without a problem, but sometimes I get video interferenxce on screen similar to what happens if a mobile phone rings in close proximity ro a CRT monitor, at which time it hangs and I have to switch off, pick it up by a corner again and reseat on the desk. When I reboot,all is well for a while, until I knock or move it slightly. Is this a hair crack in the motherboard, or could it be a loose connection somewhere???
Sincerely:
Rob McKnight
April 29th, 2007 at 11:46 am
Rob McKnight,
There is no simple answer to this question. The only way to find out is start taking the laptop apart, reseating all internal connections and devices and testing it after each step. That’s what I usually do.
Try reseating the memory module first, move it from one slot to another.
May 4th, 2007 at 1:45 am
When I start my Toshiba Tecra m3 laptop it asks for BIOS password how to crack it
May 7th, 2007 at 5:32 am
kiyani,
You cannot crack the BIOS password on a Toshiba Tecra M3 laptop. There is no workaround for it. You’ll have to take this laptop to an authorized repair center.
May 23rd, 2007 at 3:11 pm
a customer brought me a toshiba tecra2100 with a problem of the screen,in that when u power it on it loads sometime with the screen normal&at times with the screen dim.u can see windows but it will be dim in the background of the screen.i tried to work on the VGA board only but the time i fixed it back after some time when u power on it lights a green led shortly 4 a sec an then starts blinking an orange led.what do think is da problem pliz help coz the customer needs his laptop the way he brought it.i wil be glad if any one saves me thanx.
May 24th, 2007 at 8:57 pm
Natik,
Try reseating the video card and the power board, it’s possible these board do not make a good connection with the motherboard. Reseating them might help.
May 31st, 2007 at 2:35 am
Hi CJ… first I’d like to thank you for all the valuable info you have provided everybody on the Tecra 2100. Some of my questions have already been answered due to your attentiveness, as well as the disassembly guide you’ve offered.
I purchased my TE2100 as a refurbed unit almost 2 years ago, and it has been very reliable, and surprisingly rugged, since I work on the road, and have it running in the car with me more often than not.
It seems that my main battery and the CMOS battery have both died within a couple months of each other. The primary battery charge light blinking orange now, I’m working on finding a replacement battery or having a local “Battery Clinic” company rebuild my old pack with new li-ion cells. Thanks to that manual, I finally know where that elusive cmos battery is! (I failed in finding it the first time I partially disassembled the computer)
During the time that I’ve observed my battery performance falling off, my HDD indicator light has quit illuminating at all. I never see any light action from it anymore when the HD is accessing. Is there a connection inside that might have come undone, or is this hard-soldered into the mainboard? How likely is it to be just a failed LED or error in the IDE controller itself? The drive otherwise functions fine without issue.
And another problem that has been bothering me is that the original 20gig IBM hard drive would be extraordinarily hot after shutting down. It’s the same with the WD 120 gig I replaced it with, due to the fact that the IDE bay is tightly sealed, with no apparent provisions for ventillation. The temperature is so hot as to be unbearable if applied to one’s cheek, although not my hand. It hasn’t caused any operational problems, but I’m concerned for my new hard drive that I don’t want it to die an early death due to thermal extremes. Is this normal? Is there any clever way to remedy this? (placing the laptop on top of a forced air “laptop cooler” platform does little if anything to assist in the HD’s cooling, that I could observe)
I’ve always been habitually adamant on cooling my hard drives in my desktops to minimize the fatigue that heat can render to a hard drive. So this is really bothering me.
I’ve even gone so far as to experiment with a small tri-folded piece of aluminum foil against the top of the drive within the bay with about a half inch overhanging the outside (door removed) and fanned out to form heatsink fins. I’ve only done this just to tinker with it while the comp is stationary at home. While this does noticeably dissipate SOME of the heat, it’s not a good long-term solution, and is a definite no-no for portability.
Sorry to be so long-winded… but I’m just glad to finally have access to somebody who apparently knows this machine well.
Any info would be greatly appreciated. Thanks CJ!
Jack
June 3rd, 2007 at 10:30 am
Jack,
The hard drive connector is hard-soldered into the mainboard, you can see it on the step 22. If the hard drive functions without any problem then most likely there is nothing wrong with the controller and you have a failed LED (located on the power board).
Not sure about that. I haven’t used Tecra 2100 laptop myself and cannot confirm if there are any hard drive heat related issues.
June 16th, 2007 at 6:48 am
we are a reseller in mexico and sometimes we can´t find some parts to repair laptops, I would like to know if you sell parts o do you repair them? and if you are a wholesaler or not?
if you do please send me information about your company, products and services, sales terms, etc.
June 17th, 2007 at 11:03 pm
ROSY,
I do not sell or repair laptop parts. I buy and install them.
Here’s my post about finding notebook spare parts, it might help somehow.
June 28th, 2007 at 11:19 pm
I Have Toshiba satellite 330CDS model.When I make turn on it indicates the orange led blinking at regular way but I don’t know the codes please tell me . The blinking number is 3-2-1-1 and repeatedly what it mean?
Thankyou
July 13th, 2007 at 5:43 am
how can i get to set up of toshiba 220 CDS .. i want to the laptop to boot from Cd and i am having problem what key will i press that we take me to the bios set so that i can ask the system to boot from Cd
July 13th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
Femi,
Try pressing F12 on startup. It should give you a boot menu where you can choose CD/DVD.
If you press “C” key on startup, it will force the laptop to boot from the CD/DVD drive without going to the boot menu.
Pressing Esc or F2 key should take you to the BIOS setup menu and you can change the boot order in there.
July 24th, 2007 at 11:33 am
Thanks for the article… have the same issue with an older model laptop.
July 24th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
i have a toshiba tecra 9100 laptop win xp serivce pack 2 …i lost the sound and i uninstalled the sound driver ac-xg ..i tried serveal drivers
but cant get the sound back. it acts like it dosent see the hardware to install the driver. any help… i bought this laptop used and dont know to much about it…thanks…rick
July 25th, 2007 at 11:46 pm
Rick,
You lost the only the sound or the wireless connection doesn’t work either? Check out this post related to the Tecra 9100 sound problem.
July 26th, 2007 at 1:31 am
i have problems with my tecra 9100, very similar to comments made here, all of the symptoms are present. Example: i/o error; not working on batery; random freezing and blocking; wireless not present and …. else.
Solution so far is every couple of days open the notebook to the bone, and thighten the connection between i/o and cpu board. when i re-seat the boards the problems vanish but that only gives me couple of hours and after that problems all over again.
My question: can something be done besides change of the boards all together. I mean how to improve the connection between boards without buying new ones.
July 29th, 2007 at 4:24 am
Hi everyone, I have had the same power issues described above and found that melting the solder in the joints in the power board where it connects to a cable that connects to the main board fixed my problems. after reading everyones reports on the problems i decided it was probably dry joints in one of the connectors and i thought it might be the one in the main board because the power would cut out if i lifted the laptop by that area.
So if you’re skilled with a soldering iron i would recommend redoing the joints to the cable that connects the power board to the main board (on the power board end)
August 7th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
Great stie for laptop help! Looling at how to disassemble an a55 I don;t see where to get to the power supply. The laptop I have shows no power even with the AC plug in. Maybe a bad plug? Is there an easy test on the AC plug?
August 25th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
Hi folks,
i´m owning a Toshiba Satellite Pro 6100 running WinXP Sp2 full patched and with the lastes drivers.I only use the power supply unit. I reinstalled the maschine twice and the following error won´t went away.
If i boot up the maschine it freezes completly at the login screen of WinXP. During this time it won´t accept any keyboard or mouse (tried trackpoint and external mouse)input.
After a short periode of time (5- 15 min) it “wake up” and let me work. Sometimes I have to reboot the maschine several time until I let me login.
Several post that i found via goole let me think it have something todo with the motherboard. Did anyone of you have had this problem.
If someone know how to fix it by myself. It would be great.
Thanks,
Daniel
August 26th, 2007 at 9:49 am
Daniel,
Toshiba Satellite Pro 6100 has a discrete video card, it plugs into the slot on the motherboard. Overtime, the video card might pop up from the motherboard and you’ll get all kind of weird problems with video (bad image, freezing, etc…) The keyboard and the touchpad are plugged into the video card, probably that’s why you cannot use them after the laptop freezes.
You can try this. To access the video card you’ll have to lift up the keyboard. This disassembly guide will be very helpful. Follow steps 5,6,7,8. Remove the battery before you start. In order to remove the keyboard strip shown on the step 5, I believe you’ll have to remove two screws from the bottom of the laptop. Do not disconnect the keyboard from the video card, just flip it over on the palm rest. When you get an access to the video card, gently press on the lower left corner, it might help to get a better connection between the video card and the motherboard.
Assemble the laptop back.
Warning! If you are not careful, you can damage the laptop. Proceed at your own risk and do not blame me.
September 6th, 2007 at 6:53 pm
Good Day ..
I have a Toshiba te2100, I had some problem like not booting at all and after removing and reconnecting the main battery , it used work . But now it is not booting at all . When switch on , the power indicator turns yellow and flashes . Can you pls help me on this .
September 6th, 2007 at 9:59 pm
Continuing the above problem , the error code is 82 which reads as BGVSNS voltage is not more than 1.02V when the computer is booting up….
Can you pls tell me what I need to do ???
September 14th, 2007 at 3:06 am
Satellite A60 PSA60E with Windows XP Home Edition:
System does not start at all and I have gone through most suggested procedures.
The screen featuring “TOSHIBA” is diplayed for 2 seconds and has horizontal black discontinued lines all over. The Toshiba logo looks as if it has cracks in it.
What is the problem.
Thank you for your help.
September 14th, 2007 at 3:19 am
Correction to previous post:
The screen featuring “TOSHIBA” is diplayed for 2 seconds and has VERTICAL black discontinued lines all over.
September 14th, 2007 at 8:11 am
Alec Numa,
You see the same line on the external screen, right? Most likely this is a problem with onboard memory module (soldered to the motherboard). I don’t know if it will allow you to run memory test, but you can try it. Run Memtest86+ and most likely it will fail.
Here’s my post dedicated to Toshiba Satellite A60 and A65 problems. Read through the comments.
October 5th, 2007 at 5:07 pm
I have looked through the above posts and think I have a pretty good idea of what may be wrong with my Toshiba Satellite Pro 6100; however, I want to describe the problem and see if you have any other thoughts besides taking it apart (which I am doing right now) and re-seating everything. The machine starts fine, loads Windows fine, etc. The screen looks fine with no lines or anything. It looks totally normal. Then, after anywhere between 5 and 60 minutes or so, all of the sudden the screen goes white with blue vertical lines about a quarter inch apart. The machine keeps running, meaning that the hard drive and fan do not stop humming at all when this happens, but I can’t do anything when this happens. I turn the machine off and then it absolutely will not turn back on for 10 or 15 minutes. I tried the holding the power button for 10 seconds, but that does not cause it to turn on any faster. After it decides it is going to turn on, it goes through the disk check, which I let it finish, and then turns on and runs fine until the screen goes white again. Any other thoughts than re-seating all of the power connections and such? The reason I ask is that if you think it is more likely a motherboard or video card issue (or some piece of hardware that needs to be replaced, I just as soon do it right away. Thanks in advance.
October 11th, 2007 at 9:57 am
Sorry, the above post concerns the 6000, not the 6100. I don’t see a particular video card, just a thin chrome plate where the video card is on the 6100. Thanks.
October 13th, 2007 at 8:01 pm
shocdoc,
I believe Toshiba Satellite Pro 6000 has video card integrated into the motherboard, that’s why you cannot find it.
Test your laptop with an external monitor. Connect the monitor to the laptop via VGA port and set the laptop to output video on both screens. Wait until the laptop fails. If video on the external monitor fails too, most likely you have a problem with the video card.
Check the fan, make sure it spins. I think this problem could be related to heat issue.
October 18th, 2007 at 11:33 am
I have an A25-S207 Toshiba with WIndows XP, when i boot the laptop it starts up and i the toshiba screen, then windows start up screen the a message box “The aplication or DLL C:\WINDOWS\system32\DNSAPI.dll is not a valid windows image. please check this against your installation diskette.”
so i click it off and nothing, I tried to boot in safe mode but same.
????
November 15th, 2007 at 10:52 pm
Hi
I have a Toshiba Te2100.The weirdest thing happened around 2 weeks ago.
My Daughter started up the laptop and she said something was wrong with the laptop
When I checked it out, the screen was full with vertical lines and won’t boot up only in safe mode. So I restarted the laptop and see what’s wrong, but when the laptop restarted, I couldn’t read the dos text because this time it had horizontal lines and the monitor is flickering. I connected it to an external monitor but it was doing the same thing.
I forget to mention it on boot up no beeping sound. So I disassemble the laptop to see maybe a lose connection but I didn’t find anything. I start removing all the parts one by one so maybe I can hear some beeping sound so that can point me which part is not working in my laptop but no beeping sound, unfortunately I stuck on this point and I really need your help to work it out what can be a problem with my laptop.
Thank you, for you help
December 5th, 2007 at 6:04 am
i have problem on toshiba Tecra M3 laptop on the graphics
which is distorted,ple i need help
December 22nd, 2007 at 10:18 am
I have a toshiba satellite p35-S609 (P4,1g RAM),ATI Mobility Radeon.(2004).
Recently i found out that after some time the screen saver freezes.And I am unable go to the desktop. But system shows some activity.I have to re start the system. Otherwise the system is working perfectly.
Any suggestion or key combination to go to the desktop, when the screen saver freezes. My power settings are monitor for 3 hours, HDD for 4 hrs.
Any suggestions, I am thankful
sreerama
December 23rd, 2007 at 2:01 pm
sreerama,
First of all run basic hardware diagnostic tests such as memory test and hard drive test. For memory you can use Memtest86+ and for the hard drive Hitachi’s drive fitness test. Links to both utilities you’ll find in Resources on the right side of the website.
Run both tests and find out if you have a faulty memory or a faulty hard drive. That’s would be the first thing to do.
December 27th, 2007 at 7:32 am
Toshiba Laptop issue. I have a M35-S359 which had a noisy cooling fan for some time. Over the past few weeks I was starting to get pixelation in the screen and menu screens were blank, wierd characters when typing, etc. It appeared to be an overheating problem and I found this site along with others discussing this problem. I ordered a new cooling fan, replaced it, cleaned the heatsink and used new paste. It worked fine for a few hours and then the problem started again. Now I see the issue with the onboard memory modules. Can this problem occur when the unit gets up to temperature and not occur when cold? It only seems to happen after the laptop has been on for several hours. I usually leave the thing on 24/7 for the past 4 years until this started to occur. Is it worth the effort to fix it?
December 27th, 2007 at 5:25 pm
Scott Devey,
Yes, it’s possible. I’ve seen that before.
January 3rd, 2008 at 2:47 am
I own laptop Toshiba TE 2100 Intel P4M, 512RAM 1.8ghz.
this laptop got a problem of not communicating with the monitor (any – her or out side minotor). it is showing strips on the screen. I communicated with a computer tecnician in Tanga Tanzania he noted a problem with a gadget later on told as Video card and data cable (I have a picture which I can send to you). data cabe has been detached from the place where it was soldered. Can you help me to get the part.
Could you please communicate with me using the above mention email. I am in tanzania.
Joseph Desideri
January 14th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
iI have a Toshiba satellite A215-S7422 and of course it has Windows Vista. Everything Works fine until i try to use the sound recorder. When I click on Sound Recorder my computer freezes up, and the only way for me to unfreeze it is to hold the power button down until it shutsdown the computer completely……..but thats not it, the other problem is this: I click on control panel, then i click on hardware and sounds, then i click on the sounds icon to configure my sounds, and everytime i try to click on the recording tab to configure my microphone it freezes up what should i do, i need help….im a dj and i need a way to record my voice without my Toshiba satellite A215-S7422 freezing up…email your comments and/or solutions to djpriestodii@yaho.com
January 14th, 2008 at 11:01 pm
hello my toshiba satellite a45-s250 shots down by it self can some one please tell me where can i find the disassembly manual for this model so i can clean up the heatsink. thanks
January 19th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
keno,
I’ve posted a bunch of Toshiba laptop disassembly guides at http://www.irisvista.com/tech/ and your laptop is one of them. Follow first 5 step in the disassembly guide for cleaning the heat sink. It’s not difficult at all.
January 19th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Anthony,
Did it work before? Could be software related issue. Backup personal files and reinstall factory software from the recovery disc.
Also check the BIOS version installed on your laptop. The latest BIOS is v1.30. Try upgrading the BIOS.
January 24th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
Hello,
I’m trying to figure out how to diagnosis my laptop issue.
It a Toshiba Satellite 2410-S203
My girlfriend split some water on it.
I shut it down and disconnected the battery very quickly.
and put a fan on it for a few days.
I just tryed to boot it up and much to my amazement it turns on…
Well sort of, the Power LED lights up, the battery light lights up
The hard drive spins up for a second and that led goes out.
But it hangs on the toshiba banner.
I can’t get into bios and it just hangs there no errors, no BSD….
I took out the Hard drive and installed into an internal enclosure and that works fine. H.D’s O.K.
I removed the ram and tryed to reboot just to see if I could get an error message or a way into bios but it didnt boot at all.
I put the ram back, booted and it just hangs on that toshiba banner……..
What do you think? Did it fry the MOBO?
I wouldn’t think I would get the screen and LEDs to light up if It was fried right?
I wish I had a machine in the house with the same memory specs but I dont…Would shorted out memory make it hang?
I would think that it would act like it did when I removed all ram and not boot at all.
Oh BTW the CPU fan still works and I noticed it blowing hot air as I let it sit idle on that toshiba banner for a few minutes.
Can you give me any insight into these symptoms?
Do I need a back way into BIOS? a reset?
DId the CPU go?
did the RAM go?
Did it corrupt the BIOS?
Did I just fry part of the main board?
I’m lost here. Please respond with any input
Thanks,
Alex
January 27th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
lexicon740il,
It’s possible the keyboard has been damaged and it’s halting the whole system.
Here’s something you can try. Unplug the internal keyboard from the motherboard and try starting the laptop with an external USB keyboard (or without any keyboard). Find out if you can bypass the Toshiba logo when the internal keyboard is unplugged.
February 4th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
Thanks cj, I’m gonna try that. I’ll get back to you and let you know if it works.
Thanks,
Alex
February 4th, 2008 at 10:12 pm
Keyboard disconnected… No change.
I don’t have a USB keybaord to test as an external. and this darn thing dosent have a ps2 port
I did notice however that a light illuminates on the keyboard when I press the Function key…Would that tell me it not shorted if the keyboard shows LEDs when connected?
February 7th, 2008 at 11:55 am
hello.
My tecra M1 is dead. It didnt boot and there is no lights.
I have replaced the main power supply and now I have
the orange light ( power light ) blinking.
The secuence is:
10100010 — reversed : 01000101 – 0×45
Could you help me with this toshiba error code ? could you traslate it to get any tip ?
Thanks a lot.
February 13th, 2008 at 2:44 am
hi guys…my laptop’s key borad wont work at all. by replacing it do u thnk its gonna work?
February 13th, 2008 at 4:26 am
Javi,
For some reason translating error codes never helped me before because it doesn’t really tell you what is wrong. It gives you some technical explanation but doesn’t tell you witch part to replace or what is wrong.
I assume the new power adapter is good but just in case you can test it with a voltmeter, make sure the adapter outputs correct voltage and amperage labeled on the adapter is the same (or higher) then required by the laptop.
Try minimizing the laptop. Remove DVD drive, hard drive, battery and try turning it on from the AC adapter again. If you still have the same blinking LED, most likely there is a problem with the motherboard and you’ll have to replace it.
February 13th, 2008 at 4:29 am
Marcus,
I don’t know.
Do you know if the keyboard works in BIOS? Enter the BIOS setup menu (if you can) and see if you can use function keys in there. If keys work in BIOS, it’s possible that you have software related issue, try reinstalling the operating system.
February 18th, 2008 at 2:45 am
Hi.
I have a little “standard” problem. If I want to turn on my Tosh S P 6100 the right LED is lighting green and then permanantly the famous “orange LED” is blinking.
So I opened my Notebook and took alllll components out of it.
I think its really my power board. But if I put my main battery in it the battery will be loaded till I press the power button.
And then many hours later I got very boring and tried to make a “short” on the power board. And then that thing starts to burn and “dusting”. Then the LED´s turnd of… But 3 seconds later the LED´s turn on again. But it is still not working. ^-^
Do you have any solutions to repair it or I must buy a new power poard?
Thanks! -M!ndbyte
February 22nd, 2008 at 8:53 pm
hi,
thanks for the detailed pull apart guide! super stuff!
my TE2100 power led flashes 10000011 and sometimes 01111111, i cant find any reference to lookup the error codes though, can you help?
-joseph
February 26th, 2008 at 7:19 am
I have a Toshiba A25-S207. It is going from battery to A/C and blinks at the bottom then shuts off. I bought a new battery and it’s taking forever to charge and is now doing the same thing. I have NO idea what the problem is. Any help would be great!
March 6th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Wow, it seems that I’,m not the only one with a TE2100 problem…maybe there’s someone out there who can give me a clue on the following: My unit decided all of a sudden not to boot anymore (that’s how I found this execellent website). If I plug the power cable in the LED indicating power is “green” and the LED indicating charging is “yellow”. After a while (a couple of hours in fact) the charging LED turns “green”. As soon as I hit the “power on ” button the harddisk tries to fire up, stops and the power indicator LED gives the following sequence (I chose Morse code – I’m not to sure if ‘.’ or ‘-’ stands for ‘0′ or ‘1′): .-…..- (could read 01000001 or 10111110). Has anybody any idea what this means? Any help is greatly appreciated…..
March 8th, 2008 at 11:42 am
My TE2100 doesn’t recognize the sound card. I restarted but same result. The first time it did it I updated the sound drivers and the sound came back. Today it has lost the card again. No sound. Should I try to reseat the card ?
March 8th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
It won’t boot without a video card. TE2100 has a geforce4 video card that gets really hot. Mine got so hot it un-soldered the pins on the card. Had it repaired but it lasted just a couple of weeks. Got a replacement instead. Now I use it with an electric fan pointed at it all the time.
March 16th, 2008 at 11:16 am
i want to reply to #214…i just got a toshiba satellite off EBAY with the same problem…when you plug it in you get a green power light and a battery charge light.but when you press the power button the charge light goes off and the power light flashes an orange pattern of (short,long,short,short,long,short,long,long)does this with ac plugged in,just battery,and both plugged in….can anyone help?
March 16th, 2008 at 8:41 pm
I was getting the classic “Bad RTC battery/Bad check sum (CMOS)” error, but the laptop kept freezing whenever I tried restoring the BIOS defaults and/or leaving the laptop running to recharge the RTC battery.
Followed the Tecra TE2100 Disassembly Guide to step 23 – removing the power board. Reseated/reconnected it, and voila! No more RTC errors.
The old girl has run smoothly ever since.
April 12th, 2008 at 1:56 am
Hi,
My TE2100 has been working well for about 5 years until now! I left it during dinner and came back to find it apparently shutdown. Now it refused to start at all. The external power LED (green) and the charging (orange) LED light, but the power button has no effect at all. Is this perhaps a power PCB fault, or could there well be a main PCB problem? If the main PCB is changed, is there anyway to change the ethernet MAC address to the original address, as much of my SW is licensed to this number?
Thanks for your help.
May 18th, 2008 at 5:41 am
i have a toshiba tecra 9100, wireless not working and no sound working, could this be i/o card? i have reinstalled software and exactly the same.
i have heard there is a common fault with this,
please advise if possible
thanks for yor help in advance
dezzy
May 18th, 2008 at 9:45 am
dezzy,
Yes this is a common issue and I think your problem is related to the I/O board. We had repaired a lot of this units in the past and we had replaced tons of I/O boards because of sound/wi-fi problems.
Take a look at the instructions for a Tecra 9100 disassembly. As you can see on the disassembly step 12, the wireless card slot is located on the I/O board and the sound card connects to the I/O board through two flat cables. When both Wi-Fi card and sound fail at the same time, most likely this failure is related to the I/O board.
May 22nd, 2008 at 4:11 pm
I dug out a Tecra 8100 Laptop. It has 512Mb RAM. Sometimes it boots and sometimes it doesn’t, but it’s never worked long enough for me to play around on it.
I read Tecra’s are notorious for bad memory slots so I thought I would give it a try before ripping it apart. By the way I booted up a live CD of knoppix and ran memtest and if I moved it wrong the errors would start scrolling.
Anyway I tried both memory chips in Slot A and it, so far works great. I try both in Slot B and failure, doesn’t boot up. So it appears to be a Slot B memory slot failure. I’ve heard of people putting thin pieces of cardboard/paper to snug the memory up and I haven’t tried that yet.
Is there a reason the memory slots fail? Could it be related to the I/O board screws coming loose? Or is it just related to the memory pins loosening up?
If the cardboard doesn’t help is there a real fix for it?
May 25th, 2008 at 2:44 am
Yes it is definitely a memory Slot B failure.
Slot A works fine. But I did once in the past couple of days get a blue screen failure and it quickly rebooted so it may be Slot A will fail soon.
Does anyone know where I need to solder to fix the memory Slot? Is it on the back of the board?
June 2nd, 2008 at 7:24 pm
HI, I’ve been ‘into’ my Toshiba 2100, several times, for over a year and may have found a crude yet affective FIX for the ‘power board to mother board connection frustration’.
Here it is…. once all the mounting screws are out of the power board, including the one at the end of the ‘tail’, then ’skew’/rotate the power board counter clockwise just a bit, about the mother board socket connection. I used a piece of plastic about 1/8″ (perhaps less) thick between the CD/DVD drive case and the power board. I had to drill (slightly move the hole) on two of the power board holes since they did not exactly line up with the original holes well enough. I left the power board ‘tail’ screw undrilled and unsecured. Powered it up (after hours of frustration) performed the reinstall of the software (cause I was about to sell the old friend) and eureka .. I’m writing this on the laptop and it has not ‘failed yet’. Perhaps this will help another. Cheers.
June 11th, 2008 at 6:22 am
Here is another one,A215 the dvd burns but you cannot see it on dvd players older than 2008
June 26th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
I need help taking apart my Toshiba Satellite 1135-S1553. Does anyone know where i get go to get a good guide?
July 21st, 2008 at 3:40 am
Hi everyone -hoping you can shed some light on my situation!
I have a Tecra M2 laptop, its been in storage for a while and hasn’t had any charge to it. I take it out from storage and plug in mains, power on.
I got a RTC battery error, which is fair enough I was going to see if worked and then leave it over night to charge the RTC battery.
Anyway the sytem wouldn’t boot into XP – it kept looping the POST and then reset. So I tried loading XP safemode -RESULT! it worked for around 30 mins, then I got a BSOD which flashed for about 0.5 seconds and since then the sytem won’t POST, boot or anything.
The system has been stripped down looking for burnt out parts, but nothing is visible. The system power light comes on, the charge light comes on, the HDD and DVDlight flash briefly when powered up and the FN key lights up on the keyboard when pressed.
This is bugging the crap out of me -it worked fine then stopped. Nothing on the screen, but I can open the DVD drive and insert a disk which it tries to read. But I can’t see anything on the screen oln both internal and external monitors.
Any ideas? I can’t see why it would just stop working.
Thanks
Chris
July 21st, 2008 at 3:45 am
By the way there is are a couple of solder points with RESET written next to it… Hows the best way to short the contacts? Will try anything as am not bothered by soldering etc.
July 22nd, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Chris,
Could be memory related problem. Did you try reseating the memory module? If you have two RAM modules, remove them one by one and test the laptop with each module separately. If you have only one RAM module, try moving it into the empty slot.
July 23rd, 2008 at 2:36 am
Hi CJ2600
I tried a couple of separate sticks of RAM for the problem, still nothing – but it got me thinking. What if it were a bad contact on the memory slot to the mobo….
Thanks to your affirmation above, I managed to locate several pins that had “lifted” from the board – due to heat?
Anyway, a cleaned all the contacts and applied a tiny pinhead amount of solder to the lose contacts.
Stuck the RAM back in and you know what? The thing came to life!
Absolutely over the moon mate.
Thanks for your reply – I really appreciate it.
Regards
Chris
July 31st, 2008 at 8:17 pm
TE2100 Flashing Orange Power Light Problem
To Dennis Peyton, you didn’t happen to take a photo of what you did that you could post to see how you fixed it.
I finally bit the bullet and pulled the whole Laptop apart, when I finally assembled it again it actually booted up. I shut the laptop down to put 2 screws back in the back but when I tried to start it again it went back to its old ways of the Orange Flash.
I then half puuled it apart so I could reseat the powerboard and cables and also unplug the cmos battery (for 30mins). But no luck. I even took out everything that I didn’t need except the ram as I only have 1 stick. Can anyone help please, I purchased a new battery and I dont want to waste my money.
August 1st, 2008 at 1:23 am
OK I managed to get the TE2100 to power up and boot, but to do this I had to twist the chassis by holding the middle of the laptop and pulling the back right corner upwards and then pressing the on button. As soon as I let it back down it shuts off and looses power. I have now concluded that it is a connection problem between the powerboard and mainboard. Is there anyway to fix this without replacing any of the boards.
I tried to understand what Dennis Peyton wrote to fix his problems but without a picture I cant seem to understand exactly how it should be done.
August 6th, 2008 at 8:45 am
Hi guys was just trying to find a place that will remind me where which screw goes where,… and came here (bine here before),. Anyway just FYI another thing about the e2100’s video, is he place it is attached to the mainboard i is right under the keyboard and I have found (two now) that using the keyboard will BRAKE the video cable connecion right in the middle of the connection and video bord itself
A little soldering will bring the card back to life.
EG: cable plugs into video plug, solder connections on board brake
Just FYI Harry
August 7th, 2008 at 9:49 am
Hi,
I have TOSHIBA Satellite A135-s2246 with 1.5 years old A few days ago, the keyboard and mouse of my laptop suddenly was frozen, which forced me shut down the laptop.
After I restart, the mouse-keyboard frozen problem persists with additional loud noise (like static electrics noise). I reinstalled the OS as out-of-factory standard. Nothing has been improved.
Does any one know how I could solve the mouse-keyboard frozen problem. It usually happen about 10 minutes after starting computer, or this laptop is unrepairable? Much thanks!
September 22nd, 2008 at 7:32 am
Hi ,
have been trying to download the recovery disk and the backup
of TOSHIBA TECRA M2. yet i can’t download pls if there is
. anybody that have the software they should please help me
with it, i will be great full if my request is consider thank you,,,,,,
my Email: ID is bayoobodo@yahoo.com
October 5th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
I have an easiest way to fix Laptop Heating problem !!! Take a good VACUUM Cleaner and put the hose at the exhaust port of the Laptop for about 30 seconds … THAT’S IT !!! I have TWO Toshiba Laptops and they used to quit running after about 45 mins. … both of them. A local Laptop Shark wanted $ 200.00 to fix each. Yeah … Right !!! Try it … No screws to be removed … no tools needed … nothing. Only a regular house Vacuum Cleaner !!! Both the Laptops are now running COOL and they never quit because of OVER HEATING !!!
October 18th, 2008 at 10:18 am
Hi
SOME ONE CAN HELP ME TO FIX MY LAPTOP.
THE SCREEN IS GOING TO BE BLACK AFTER 15 NMINUTES OPERATION.
I TURNED IT OF AND ON TURNED ON AGAIN , THE PROBLEM HAS BEEN THE SAME.
THANHKS
November 15th, 2008 at 5:17 am
My Toshiba A105 would power down on its own whenever the computer got too warm. Depending on the temperature of the room I was in, sometimes the laptop would run for 20 minutes before powering down and other times it would run for 10 minutes. I searched the web for what could be causing this. The answer was too much dust or dust bunnies in the fan and heat sink. I carefully disassembled my computer and pulled all of the dust out (there was a surprising amount in there). Now, the laptop runs fine. Apparently this is a common problem with Toshiba laptops. Ps- you might want to try to vacuum cleaner method recommended by other first. This could help avoid taking the laptop apart on doing accidental damage.
November 24th, 2008 at 10:23 pm
Hello pal (Sorry I dont know your name) would you help me please..
I have a TE2100. Sometimes the trackpoint is locked in vertical direction (it can move normally in horizontal direction but unable to move vertically). Can you help me to fix this problem? As addition the keypad [5] / [%] is not functioning.
I dont install special driver for trackpoint, just default driver from XP becausei cant find special trackpoint driver for te2100 from toshiba sites.
If it is not bother you, please send me a copy of your answer to my e-mail since I don’t connected regularly.
Thanks a lot pal.
December 24th, 2008 at 7:26 am
My old Toshiba 1905-S301 worked perfectly for over 6 years.
He is still working perfectly as long I DO NOT MOVE THE LAPTOP OR THE SCREEN. THEN THE SCREEN IS GARBLE WITH DIFFERENT COLORS, LINES OR SQUARES, WITH OR WITHOUT THE WORKING POINTER ON IT.THEN THE SCREEN TURNS BLACK WITH A FAINT LIGHT IN THE BACKGROUND.
I CONNECTED AN EXTERNAL MONITOR AND IT WORKS FINE (TOGETHER WITH THE LAPTOP SCREEN) BUT BOTH SCREEN FAULTED AS SOON I MOVE THE LAPTOP OR ITS SCREEN. AT THAT POINT THE POWER LIGHT STILL IS ON BUT NOTHING ELSE WORKS.
AFTER THE FAILURE, I CAN HEAR THE HDD, THE COOLING FAN RUNING AND THE CHARGING OF THE BATTERY IS WORKING FINE AND NOT AFFECTED BY THE FAULT.
SO IT CANNOT BE A POWER SUPPLY PROBLEM.
AFTER I RECONFIGURED THE LAPTOP WITH A FULL RECOVERY DISK, IT WORKED PERFECTLY UNTIL I MOVED THE SCREEN. THEN SAME FAULT AGAIN AND AGAIN!
I HAD A PROBLEM WITH A BROKEN PIN OF THE POWER BOARD FEW MONTHS AGO BUT I REPLACED IT AND IT WORKED PERFECTLY.
Could you help?
January 12th, 2009 at 2:00 am
Trying to fix my brothers tecra 2100, and I reseated all of the boards several times. I have got it to charge now and holds charge on the battery but hitting the power button gives me error lights 10110001. What is the code or where can i find a manual to look it up.
Thanks
Spook
January 25th, 2009 at 4:03 am
turned on my laptop one day, problems with the charger port.
plugged my charge in and it wouldnt charge, i wiggled it around in the port a little bit and the charging light came on and off for about 30 seconds while i tried to fit it in the right spot, and then it just stopped altogether. so at least i know its the port. maybe just need to clean it or re-attach or replace some wires? this website helped me open my laptop. but how are you meant to remove the hard drive or disc drive? not sure how, the hard drive had some kind of flap looked like i had to pull on, but mine was ripped, im not sure how but it is. and now i cant get it out. is there a button or something? and then how to get out the disc drive, not sure.
just asking so i can try to fix my problem.
missing my laptop
January 26th, 2009 at 10:57 pm
jacob,
Are you sure it’s not the power cord problem? Did you test the AC adapter with a voltmeter and get stable readings?
February 1st, 2009 at 4:08 pm
The touch pad on my laptop Toshiba Satellite does not work.
February 2nd, 2009 at 10:01 pm
Mary Smith,
Try enabling the touch pad through the keyboard short cut.
Turn on the laptop and wait until it boots to the desktop. Now press on the Fn key and hold it down. At the same time press once on the F9 key. Does it work now?
February 16th, 2009 at 9:48 am
Hi,
I got the same blinking problem with TE2100.
tried reseating powerboard and vga doesn’t work.
it was fine before i clean the board with paint thinner… A cup of coffee spilled over it he he he OOOOPPPS
February 17th, 2009 at 8:58 pm
Cj2600,
I noticed that you had extensive experience with the 2100s. could you tell me if you ever had an issue with one that would not post at all? I am wondering if the power button has failed as well.
I have a charging light and also a green AC light. When i press the power button nothing happens. I attempted to reset the cmos by pulling the cmos battery for 10 minutes to see if that would work.
I have also done a selective start up with only CPU and no ram or one stick and no HD. I have reseated everything once or twice. Just would like some insight as to where I should look now.
I have managed to get a blink code once or twice. I just do not have a source for looking it up. 10110001
Let me know what you think?
February 22nd, 2009 at 6:52 pm
Hi,
I have (or rather my boss has) a Toshiba TE2100. I recently turned it on and there was a cd in the drive. It froz completely and I had to reboot. On rebooting, a black screen came up before and after the windows 98 opening screen (yes, he uses win98..). This screen said Error #1. and thats it.
Now the CD drive isnt even being detected ie. not showing up in my computer nor is it responding when I press the eject button. I’m not sure what to do, any suggestions?
Many thanks in advance
Amylee
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:21 pm
Could some one please help me with my Toshiba A45-S130? I need to replace the fan. Could some one please tell me how to do that? Also I can’t power it up( i.e. It wont turn on) the power cord is plugged in and the battery light comes on and the plug light comes on but when I push the on/off button the plug light starts blinking orangish and the batter light is no longer lit up. HELP!! Please email me at amylc1970@yahoo.com. Thank you, Amy
February 26th, 2009 at 11:18 pm
Amylee,
Did it say “IDE #1 Error”?
IDE #1 is the CD drive. Apparently it failed and has to be replaced.
Just in case try reconnecting the CD drive. Remove it from the laptop and install back. Sometimes it helps.
February 26th, 2009 at 11:22 pm
Amy,
You’ll find partial laptop disassembly at http://www.irisvista.com/tech/
This laptop has two fans. In order to access the main fan (CPU fan), you’ll have to remove the motherboard. Before you disassemble the laptop, I would recommend to find out why it’s not powering up.
You’ll have to test the AC adapter to make sure it works properly and outputs correct voltage. If the adapter is fine, there could be a problem with the motherboard.
March 7th, 2009 at 9:04 pm
i have problem with my te2100 LCD.my lcd was blank with blue and white screen an sometime the lcd get rolling.but i still can boot windows.i have upgrade my vga driver but not help.
sorry with my english,i’m indonesian guys
March 9th, 2009 at 8:32 pm
Laptop will not boot at all. There is no power or power LED blinking
April 30th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
Hi there…I hv problem in the pin where we attach the headphones. Even one external speaker not working…so does any one know the solution for this.
June 4th, 2009 at 10:40 pm
LCD BLINKING AND NO DISPLAY
June 7th, 2009 at 10:39 am
Levy Lorenzo,
How about external video? Did you test the laptop with an external monitor attached to the VGA port?
July 29th, 2009 at 3:42 am
dear sir
i have tecra m3recondioted laptop i forgot the bios password how cani reset cmos password ther is no cmos battery and jumbers please anybody can help me to do i really apreciate your early reply please email to me solution
August 24th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
Hey CJ i just purchased a te2100 off ebay. How can i prevent it from having all of those problems so i dont need to fix it years later. Maybe epoxy to hold the video and power board down in case of screws pop up.
August 26th, 2009 at 10:01 pm
Chris,
Buy another laptop.
November 15th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
I have a friend of mine give me a old laptop for my kid.it is a Toshiba Satellite 2100cds.I tried to reformat it with it recover cd,but this time is fail.I got a message is “recording current bad clusters” “trying to recover allocation unit 1,049,459 .I don’t know what is the problem with reformat it.Help Help Help.Any one respond will be appreciate that!
November 16th, 2009 at 11:53 am
tom50,
Probably the hard drive is failing and has to be replaced.