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.
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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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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?
November 22nd, 2006 at 2:26 am
My problem is on toshiba laptop satellite dynabook model ps181n-q6x0 that has stardby light blinks but does’t boot
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.