Yesterday I replaced my old, big and noisy Sony PCG-FRV26 laptop with a new, fast and slim Toshiba Satellite A105-S361 and I didn’t pay a penny. Thanks to the BestBuy extended warranty!
Here is the story. It started about 4 years ago when I bough my first laptop from BestBuy. It was Toshiba Satellite 1800 and I paid for it $1099. It was a good computer for that particular time. The sales man offered me to buy an extended 3 years warranty to “protect my investment” for $249. It was a tough call for me because I was kind of short on money but I bought it anyway. I am so glad that I did it. Toshiba Satellite 1800 was not a very reliable laptop and during first 2 years it was repaired 3 times. After it broke the fourth time I took it to BestBuy and politely mentioned about “No Lemon” policy and they granted me a laptop exchange. They applied $1099 toward my new laptop. I bought Sony PCG-FRV26 and paid only the difference $1349-$1099=$250. They offered again to buy an extended warranty and this time I didn’t think a lot and paid $249 right away. Sony laptop worked fine for a year but then it started to break. First the CD-ROM drive stopped spinning, then the AC adapter stopped working and finally the laptop didn’t boot at all. I took it to BestBuy for repair and left it there. After that I was calling on status every 2 weeks trying to get my laptop back. Every time they were telling a different story why it is not repaired. Finally, after 2 months they called me and explained that my laptop would be replaced. The same evening I went to BestBuy and picked up my new baby Toshiba Satellite A105-S361 for $1199. It was cheaper then Sony laptop, so they just exchanged it and I didn’t have to pay anything. I love it! They tried to give me a cheaper laptop, but after I explained them how much I suffered during these months without my laptop they gave up.
Do you know where I go tonight? You are right; I’m going to buy an extended warranty again!
UPDATE: This article was written almost 4 years ago. Times are changing. Laptops are getting cheaper and cheaper every day. Now it doesn’t make sense to get the extended warranty unless you are buying a very expensive laptop.
One day you turn on your computer and cannot see the CD-ROM or the DVD-ROM drive in the My Computer window anymore. This problem is very common for laptop and notebook computers and might be caused by a failed drive or by corrupted software. You can try the following repair steps before you decide that your drive is bad.
- I found this solution on Microsoft website and it helped me many times to fix the problem with a missing DVD/CD-ROM drive. I always try removing the CD/DVD drive from the device manager first and if it doesn’t fix the problem I go with removing the registry entry. Method 1 worked very well for me.
- If the above mentioned methods didn’t work for you, you can try to reseat the optical drive. Overtime the CD-ROM drive connector might get oxidized and a simple drive reseating can fix the problem. Try to remove the drive from the laptop and put it back. See if it will fix the problem.
- You can also try to boot from any bootable CD to see if you laptop recognize the CD-ROM drive on BIOS level. Put any bootable CD (Live Linux CD, Windows XP CD, Windows 2000 CD, etc) into the CD-ROM drive and change the boot order to start from the CD-ROM drive. If you laptop starts to boot from the CD, then the drive is recognized in BIOS and most likely it operates properly. In this case look for a software problem. It might be necessary to reload the operating system to fix the software problem. If you cannot boot your laptop from a bootalbe CD, then the drive might be bad itself.
Today I was scheduled to repair Toshiba Satellite Pro M10-S405 laptop with a “software problem”. The customer complained that he is getting the following error right after he turns on his laptop.
ERROR
Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
System32\Drivers\ntfs.sys
I started the laptop and got the above mentioned error right away. Restarted it again and on startup a different file was missing:
System32\Drivers\pci.sys
If you search on the internet for these errors you will find a lot of tips how to fix it. Unfortunately, on most websites this error is mentioned only as a software problem. They say that you can fix it if you replace corrupted files from a Windows CD using a recovery console. I guess in some cases you can fix the problem by replacing corrupted files, but from my experience I know that these kinds of errors are very often caused by a faulty memory module. Read the rest of this entry »
Laptops are not very upgradable computers and in general you stuck with hardware you got inside your laptop. But still there are some components that you can upgrade to improve the performance of you computer. One of these components is memory (RAM). In short, more memory – better computer performance.
There are a lot of different memory brands on the market and sometimes it is very easy to get lost. As a computer technician I would recommend to use Crucial – high quality, not expensive and very reliable computer memory.
Crucial offers you very good tools integrated into their website. These tools will help you to find the correct memory type and correct memory size for your computer.
If you have no idea what kind of memory is installed into your laptop you should use the Crucial system scanner. The Crucial System Scanner takes the guesswork out of upgrading your memory.
The Crucial system scanner will examine you computer and give you an idea what kind of memory you need, what memory size you should use and how many sticks you can install.
More advanced users can use the Crucial Memory Advisor tool. In this case you will have to select the manufacturer, the product line and the model of your laptop manually.
Here are some laptop repair service manuals for old Toshiba laptops. If you are interested in a specific service manual from the bellow listed models, follow the links:
| Toshiba Satellite Series | |
|
Toshiba Satellite 1555CDS |
Toshiba Satellite 2715XDVD |
| Toshiba Satellite Pro Series | Toshiba Libretto Series |
| Toshiba Satellite Pro 4260DVD Toshiba Satellite Pro 4280XDVD Toshiba Satellite Pro 4280ZDVD Toshiba Satellite Pro 440CDT Toshiba Satellite Pro 440CDX Toshiba Satellite Pro 445CDT Toshiba Satellite Pro 445CDX Toshiba Satellite Pro 460CDT Toshiba Satellite Pro 460CDX Toshiba Satellite Pro 470CDT Toshiba Satellite Pro 480CDT Toshiba Satellite Pro 490CDT Toshiba Satellite Pro 490XCDT |
Toshiba Libretto 50CT Toshiba Libretto 70CT Toshiba Libretto 100CT Toshiba Libretto 110CT |
“My DVD drive is not operating properly. It can play music CDs but when it plays DVDs the video and the sound are distorted.” It was my customer’s complaint about his Toshiba Satellite L25-S1215 laptop.
The following laptop troubleshooting steps helped me to fix the problem. The laptop booted to Windows pretty fast without any errors, with a normal hard drive sound and spinning CPU fan. I restarted the laptop couple times and didn’t notice anything abnormal. I tested the optical drive with a generic data CD and a DVD movie. The drive recognized the data CD and all files on it but refused to play the DVD correctly. The video and sound output from the DVD movie was choppy, skipping scenes. It looked like a defective DVD drive and I ordered a replacement from Toshiba under warranty. I was pretty sure that a new DVD drive will fix the problem, but it didn’t. After I replaced the DVD drive the same problem occurred right away. The laptop had 256MB memory installed and 64MB were reserved for the video memory. I blamed a lack of memory and installed an extra 512MB memory stick and it didn’t help either. My guess about a corrupted video driver was wrong too because after I downloaded and reinstalled the driver the DVD video still was distorted. In cased like this, when we are not sure what is causing the problem the software or the hardware, we always install a test hard drive and reload the original factory software. I installed a test HDD and reloaded Toshiba Satellite L25 restore CD. After that the problem with a distorted video and audio output was fixed and I was able to play the movie for 2 hours without errors. Most likely, the problem with playing DVD occurred because of corrupted software.
If you have a similar problem with your laptop, do not rush to replace the DVD drive. Backup the important data and run a restore CD, it might fix your problem.
Related posts:
Toshiba Satellite M45 laptop freezes up after playing a DVD movie for about 30 minutes to an hour
There are a lot of notebook computer buying guides designed to help an inexperienced user to buy the right notebook. Some of these guides are good, some of them are not. Here is a notebook buying guide I like because it”s written on people’s language and not designed to sell you anything. This guide explains the difference between a budget notebook, a mainstream notebook and a gaming notebook and what you should expect from your laptop.
From myself I would like to add some hardware related details you should think of before you buy a notebook computer.
Laptop AC Adapter.
Make sure to check the size of the AC adapter before you buy a laptop. Usually, you do not see the AC adapter before you buy the laptop and open the box at home. You’ll be very surprised to see that your AC adapter is half-size of your computer. I did this mistake when I bought Sony Vaio PCG-FRV26. The AC adapter wasn’t designed for a portable computer at all.
Volume Control.
If you like listen music a lot then you have to choose a laptop with some kind of a hardware sound volume control (sound volume buttons or sound volume wheel located on the laptop). I prefer a volume wheel like on most Toshiba laptops. The volume wheel gives you almost instant access to the sound level. If you do not have a hardware control, then the only way to change the sound volume is through the software settings; it takes some time.
Sound System.
This is again for music lovers. Make sure to find a laptop with a good sound system. In my opinion, Harman/Kardon system is one of the best. I have Harman/Kardon speakers on my HP Pavilion zv5430us and the sound is awesome. 
Sound on my Sony Vaio laptop sucks! 
Here are some tips and tricks for troubleshooting and fixing laptop video problems. Video issues are very common within portable computers and with the following tips you should be able to detect and eliminate basic laptop video problems.
Laptop LCD screen has a faint image.
Look at the LCD screen very closely and check if you can see a faint image on the screen. It’s possible that the LCD lid close switch stuck in the “closed” position and the backlight stays off even when you open the LCD screen or turn on the laptop. The switch turns off the backlight when you close the LCD display to save the laptop battery power. Check the LCD lid close switch. Usually it is a small plastic pin located close to the LCD hinges. Try to tap on the switch a few times to turn on the backlight. If after tapping on the LCD lid close switch the backlight stays on, you fixed the problem.
It is also possible that after tapping on the LCD lid close switch the backlight works fine, you see a normal video on the screen for some time and then the backlight turns itself off again. In this case I would blame the FL inverter board. Try to reseat cables on both end of the FL inverter to make a better contact between the cables and the FL inverter board. If it doesn’t help I would try to replace the FL inverter board.
Read the rest of this entry »
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. Read the rest of this entry »
To connect a laptop hard drive to a desktop computer you have to use a Laptop IDE Hard Drive Adapter. You can easily find this adapter on the Internet for $10-$15. This adapter is very handy if you want to scan a laptop hard drive for viruses and spyware using antivirus software installed on a desktop PC, transfer data from a laptop hard drive to a desktop computer or create a ghost image from one hard drive to another. I also use this adapter if a laptop hard drive has failed and I have to recover data from it. Read the rest of this entry »
