Toshiba Satellite 1415 notebook runs very slow
I spent about 4 hours trying to repair this laptop. The customer brought in Toshiba Satellite 1415 notebook with the following problem: Laptop runs very slow, sometimes locks up. When playing DVD movie, the video output is choppy and freezes up. He reloaded Windows XP from a restore CD but it didn’t help.
We see these kinds of laptops every day and this one didn’t look scary from the beginning. As I always do, I started the laptop waiting for the problem to occur. The laptop booted to Windows fine but much slower than an average unit. During the boot process I was listening for an unusual sound from the hard drive. It was a little bit loud; but nothing critical like a grinding sound. After the notebook booted to Windows, I tried to play a DVD movie and it took me more then 2 minutes to open WinDVD player software. It took one more minute to start playing a DVD movie. The video and the audio output were choppy. Replacing the DVD drive didn’t help. I was blaming the hard drive and started testing it with Hitachi Drive Fitness Test but it didn’t fail. Just in case I installed a test hard drive and reloaded the original factory software. Same problem occurred right after I rebooted the laptop. I tested the memory with Memtest 86+ test. It took me over 2.5 hours to test 512MB of memory but it didn’t fail the test. Usually this test runs much faster. Just in case, to make sure that the memory is not a culprit I swapped both memory sticks with a good known test memory but it didn’t fix the problem. After I excluded the hard drive and the memory I guessed that overheating was a problem because the laptop was running hot. If a laptop runs slow, I always check if the CPU heatsink is clogged with dust and lint. In this case cleaning up the heatsink, regreasing the CPU and reflashing the BIOS to the latest version didn’t help either. OK, I tried all easy stuff, now it’s time for hardcore. I started removing parts one by one trying to narrow down the problem. I removed the modem card, wireless card, DVD drive and left only the system board, the CPU, a good know hard drive with a fresh Windows load and a good known memory stick. The laptop still was running slow. After 4 hours I gave up. After I excluded almost every possible part, it must be a bad system board or a bad CPU. Replacing any of these parts wouldn’t make any sense because it would be more expensive than eBay price for a similar working laptop. I called to the customer and explained the situation and he just declined repair.
Entry Filed under: Everyday Laptop Repair
May 8th, 2008 at 7:18 pm
Remove Laptop battery and see if this improves performance. Old smart batteries sometimes have the controller fail, causing the sytem to consistently try and “poll” a non-responsive smart battery.
January 22nd, 2008 at 9:40 pm
mrz2008,
Reinstalling factory software from scratch eliminates any software/virus related problems. If you reinstall the operating system but the computer is still slow, it’s not software/virus/spyware related issue.
January 22nd, 2008 at 1:32 pm
u shold’ve gave the computer a virus check by usinng avg free and tried to check for viruses by using one of their virus removal tools. it worked a miracle for me because my pc was really slow before and after i done a virus cleanout boy my system was flying!
December 28th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
I have a Toshiba satellite 1415 which I mainly us for internet access. last week it started to make a very faint noise when I started the windows and then I noticed the laptop work very slow. I reinstalled the recovery CDs several times, didn’t help. even installing the full version of XP pro didn’t help neither. I thought that because of the noise it should be a mechanical problem most likely related to Hard. I tested the Hard and it was OK. I read your article that overheating and dirty fan may cause that, therefore I tried to open the hard case and clean the fan but I couldn’t (probably I was missing a screw which I couldn’t see) but I could open the shell half way. I closed it again and VOLLA!!! it start working fast again. My best guess, probably my 2 years old had stepped on my laptop and somehow the compressed keybord was pushing on the hard drive and made it noisy and slow. Thought that I wanted to share my experience with others too.
Good Luck.
April 24th, 2007 at 11:18 pm
Erin,
From the description it’s hard to guess what is wrong.
What kind of noise? Like a bad fan or some kind of clicking sounds (probably bad hard drive)?
Looks like a problem with the power jack I described here.
I would test the memory module first. Find a known good memory stick and install it instead of yours. Test the laptop. Try reseating the RAM module, move it from one slot to another.
April 24th, 2007 at 4:04 pm
I have a Toshiba Satellite 1415-S173 that’s about 3-4 years old, and had been running pretty slow for a while, too, and making a lot of noise on startup. For a while it was shutting down suddenly, telling me my battery was low even if the AC adapter was plugged in. This morning the left 2 LED power lights were on (green and orange respectively from left), but the laptop wouldn’t power on at all. After holding down the power button, both lights went off and now it won’t turn on at all (either with or without the battery, plugged into AC). I thought the battery was dead, but not sure if that’s the case since it doesn’t worked plugged in either (I’ve tried several outlets). I would appreciate any input. Thanks!!
March 1st, 2007 at 2:51 pm
Long shot but sounds like an interupt issue. Make sure they haven’t shorted any of the USB pins.
February 22nd, 2007 at 9:51 pm
Uhh, before swapping and disassembly, why not run diagnostic software on the motherboard, processor, and stuff?
October 20th, 2006 at 8:58 am
Joe,
Before you buy a new hard drive, try reinstalling the operating system on the existing drive. It can help. Backup all personal data and run a restore CD.