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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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 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 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 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 1st, 2007 at 1:17 am
need to unlock toshiba tecra m3 as it is asking 4 password pl help thk.
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.
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 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 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 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.