Toshiba Satellite M45 laptop freezes up after playing a DVD movie for about 30 minutes to an hour
One of my customers complained that his Toshiba Satellite M45 laptop freezes up after playing a DVD movie for about 30 minutes to an hour. First of all I booted the laptop to Windows to check a basic functionality of the computer. It booted fine and Windows OS appeared to be in a good shape. The laptop was fast and responsive. I left it on for 30 minutes and it didn’t fail. After that I launched a DVD player and started a home made DVD disc provided by the customer. After playing the movie for about 25 minutes, the laptop locked up. The video on the display froze up and vertical lines of flickering white dots appeared on some areas of the LCD screen. The video still was on the display but the laptop didn’t response to any keystroke and needed a hard reboot. I connected the laptop to an external monitor and tried to play a different DVD disc but it didn’t make any difference. The laptop locked up after 20 minutes and the same patter of vertical lines of dots appeared on the external monitor, so it’s not the LCD screen problem. From my experience I know that this kind of failure may occur because of bad memory modules. I started testing both 1GB memory modules with Memtest 86+ utility but the laptop locked up before I finished testing. Only after I removed both memory sticks and installed a good known test memory module I was able to play the customers DVD overnight and the laptop didn’t fail. To make sure that both memory slots on the system board are fine I installed my memory into the second slot and tested the laptop again. It worked fine.
So, the laptop didn’t fail with my memory stick installed into both memory slots on the system board. It means that the memory slots on the system board are good and the system board is good itself. Now it is time to test customer’s memory. I installed my 512MB memory stick in slot 1 and first customer’s memory stick into slot 2 and put the laptop on my bench to play a DVD movie. The laptop didn’t fail for 1 hour. After that I installed my 512MB memory into slot 2 and second customer’s stick into slot 1 and started the movie. The laptop didn’t fail again. OK, both 1GB memory sticks work fine with a combination with my 512MB memory, but do not work together. For some reason the laptop can manage 1.5GB of memory but cannot manage 2GB. Oh man! I do not know why I didn’t do it before, may be I didn’t sleep enough at night. Only after I spent all these time troubleshooting memory sticks, I decided to check Toshiba website for a new BIOS updates for this laptop. The laptop had BIOS v1.0 and this version was not even listed on Toshiba website. I guess it was some kind of pre-production version. The current version was 1.10. After I updated the BIOS I didn’t see the problem with the video output anymore.
Attention! 
Before you spend time troubleshooting a good working hardware, CHECK for BIOS updates first. It helps a lot.
Entry Filed under: Everyday Laptop Repair
February 27th, 2006 at 11:36 pm
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February 22nd, 2007 at 11:01 am
i tried copying a movie from a dvd to my hard disk. some files could not copy this made the system to hang/freeze. I then powered the system off from the power botton. the problem now is, the system does not boot when it is powered on.
it’s a toshiba M45 2692 series. the system has not lasted up to a year in my possession
February 25th, 2007 at 1:37 am
Marvin,
You’ll need a special software for this, something like this one.
Did you try to drag-n-drop all files from the DVD disk to the hard drive? It’s not going to work this way. You cannot make a back up of your DVD this way.
March 14th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
I am having a similar problem - I think?? Satellite M45-S359 running WinXP (home) SP2
It just started acting sluggish while playing online (email, myspace, etc.) & shuts off. Now for 2 nights in a row; it boots up & windows comes up & loads programs SLOW and then the cooling fan comes on high & after a few mins. it shuts off. No warning. I have run (with several boots) virus & adaware scan, defrag & system restore to 10 days prior. However, if this is a battery problem - I have found out today that you should charge your battery with the a/c adapter & unplug it & run it down. It’s always been plugged in via a/c adapter. Oops! I purchased it in Oct. 05. Any ideas? Will updating the BIOS to V1.10 help? Or is it my battery? It has always been on a cooling pad &/or podium. I will check the vents to be sure they aren’t clogged. After that I’m lost! Please help! Oh & it runs ok in safe mode & didn’t shut off. I think I’ve covered it! Your knowledge & help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!
March 20th, 2007 at 4:42 am
I have encountered the same problems as Shannon - I have a Satellite M45-S355. Machine will be running, then the cooling fan fires up, then BLAMMO, it powers down. I also have had mine plugged into AC adapter since I bought it (Sept. 05).
I came across a class-action settlement against Toshiba, but it doesn’t include the M45 series:
http://www.a70m30xsettlement.com/notice.pdf
I will try updating the BIOS, because I am dead in the water here…any feedback would be greatly appreciated, thanks!
March 20th, 2007 at 6:11 pm
Barry,
This is a settlement only for Satellite M30X, M35X, A70 and A75 notebooks.
May 1st, 2007 at 3:07 am
All, when the fan goes hi-speed and shuts down, Try cleaning the processor heatsink with canned air and see what happens. But if you have a dust block, then you have to remove the heatsink and clean. A lot of problems can be avoided by simple regular cleaning.
September 11th, 2008 at 9:07 am
I had the exact same issues with an M45-S359 after I stuck two 1GB sticks of brand-new Kingston RAM in it. I could re-create the system hangs (vertical lines, flashing dots, etc.) when I had two full-length movies in AVI format (Divx) playing simultaneously. The BIOS version that I was on initially was 1.10, upgraded to 1.20 and now all is fine. Thanks for the guidance!
November 12th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
Thankyou SOOO MUCH, my space key is once againfunctional…well almost, as long as its back on, a little extra oomph in that once gentle tap is fine by me.