Might be the end of the line

[Dan]

Ayup.

Unless it's an organ donor (craigs list the display, at least) burial is indicated. I recommend the following for replacement:

• Toshiba
• i5 (The i7 is amazing, but really too much for a laptop. The i3, on the other hand, is pretty much a waste of silicone -- unless all you're going to want do is twitter-snit, web surf, farcebork and email.)
• SSD for storage
• Intel video
• And oddly enough, the backlit keyboard.

The rest is a matter of choosing screen size, Linux-friendly wireless, favorite color (of grey or black), shiney keys, etc.

[glennzo]

I haven't touched the laptop for several days now except to remove the battery per stevea's suggestion. That was on the 11th. We know that this made no difference. This morning, just for kicks, I plugged in the power supply and what to my wondering eyes dd appear? A blue "we've got power" light. So, I booted the thing up. Long post, probably 60-120 legit seconds. It currently sits awaiting my Fedora 17 password.

[bbfuller]

Well, there are thermal cut outs of course that can take a while to cool and reset themselves, though I think you'd waited sometime before restarting among your tests.

I've also known machines where removing the battery and mains power, then holding down the power button for 30 seconds, then connecting back up and restarting resurrected them.

Resets some sort of internal trip I suppose that is being kept active by a charged capacitor.

All smacks of black magic though and I don't like that.

Let's hope the laptop has several years more productive life, you sound like you don't need the expense just now.

[glway]

Idk about toshiba's since I've never actually owned one. I bought a vaio what i thought was 2 years ago. Now come to think of it it's 3. Still solid as a rock but due to the fact that a top of the range laptop a few years back is now considered to be just above the lower range I would love to get a new one(and smaller this time since 16.4 inches is huge and pretty much a desktop computer rather than a laptop). Sadly the replacement will have to wait cause I've got other gaps to fill in. Despite the around $200 extra on the vaios I'd pay the price without any hesitation.

As for your problem I've had the same thing a couple of years ago with ym previous laptop. Turned out to be a problem with the bios. Instead of repairing it however I decided to get a new laptop cause that one had caused me more problems than any other machine-ram died twice, hard drive three times, battery and with an amd processor i could easily fry an egg on the keyboard...

[glennzo]

Maybe removing the battery and letting the laptop sit for a few days was all it needed. Who knows? The test will be when I unplug the thing and take it into the front room where I typically watch TV and play with Linux at the same time. Obviously I'll need to plug it back in again. Hope it powers up.

I guess I'll need to throw a couple of $20 bills per week into the dark corners of the wallet for several weeks. In time I'll have several hundred dolars earmarked for a new lappy.

Originally Posted by glennzo

Maybe removing the battery and letting the laptop sit for a few days was all it needed. Who knows? The test will be when I unplug the thing and take it into the front room where I typically watch TV and play with Linux at the same time. Obviously I'll need to plug it back in again. Hope it powers up.

I guess I'll need to throw a couple of $20 bills per week into the dark corners of the wallet for several weeks. In time I'll have several hundred dolars earmarked for a new lappy.

That's sensible, most people would use credit

[nonamedotc]

Originally Posted by glennzo

Maybe removing the battery and letting the laptop sit for a few days was all it needed. Who knows? The test will be when I unplug the thing and take it into the front room where I typically watch TV and play with Linux at the same time. Obviously I'll need to plug it back in again. Hope it powers up.
[ ... ]

A friend's laptop did EXACTLY the same thing, albeit on a different laptop. It turns out that the motherboard apparently can build up static charges - which discharges with time. Now, i do not know how true this is - but I have seen this case demonstrated more than once on his laptop...

May be, you do not have to buy a new laptop after all,

[bobloblaw]

Originally Posted by nonamedotc

A friend's laptop did EXACTLY the same thing, albeit on a different laptop. It turns out that the motherboard apparently can build up static charges - which discharges with time. Now, i do not know how true this is - but I have seen this case demonstrated more than once on his laptop...

May be, you do not have to buy a new laptop after all,

Came here to say just this. I had a Thinkpad that did exactly the same thing. Except in addition to time, some black magic can sometimes solve the problem as well. For me, the solution was to clear the static charge like nonamedotc suggests. I never figured out a super reliable way to do it, but basically through everything and the kitchen sink at it.

1. Remove power adapter and battery.
2. Use compressed air to blow out any dust/debris in around the metal/copper contacts between adapter/battery and laptop.
3. Use rubbing alcohol to clean same.
4. Hold down ctrl+shift+alt+power button for 60 seconds.
5. Hold some some other combination of ctrl+above+power button for another 60 seconds.
6. Hold down some random buttons and power button for 60 seconds.
7. Pray to whatever deity you worship.
8. Reconnect everything.

Google searches might turn up something more specific for your laptop. #3 might be a bad idea, don't know, but I had rubbing alcohol and couldn't think of anything else to use it for. And believe it or not some combination of above actually fixed it twice. Then it stopped static shorting for whatever reason.

[nonamedotc]

The machine I was referring to was also a thinkpad.

I suspect it might be the same issue with Glenn's Toshiba too ...

[glennzo]

Methinks that this may be the correct scenario. I may just power her down tonight, take her to the front room and see if she powers back up. Of couse, this obviously means disconnecting the power supply here and plugging it back in there.


Bang! Done! Posting from the laptop while sitting in the front room! Hope it lasts.

[JamesNZ]

Just FYI, when my last lappie (acer aspire 57xx) died it would hang when it got to the BIOS. But if I left for 5-10 mins then it would start up normally and everything would be fine. And then I rendered a rather heavy scene in Blender and it went into a coma Turned out that the motherboard was fried. Maybe something similar here?

[Bert Rolston]

I've seen plenty of laptops brought in by customers in what I call "The Zombie State".

The battery has gone flat while in a low power state and it doesn't shutdown completely.
So it is stuck in the shutdown sequence while being told to power up.

By pulling the AC and battery then holding down the power button for around 30 secs it drains any residual voltage from the capacitors on the motherboard.

I normally restart without the battery, then shut down the laptop immediatley the OS has finished loading. Replace the battery then try starting up again.

In almost every instance this fixes the problem.

Most common cause of this are
1) closing the lid while the laptop is shutting down, where the lid settings are set to sleep / hibernate

2) putting the computer into sleep (low power, save to RAM) mode, unplugging it to use elsewhere, then forgetting about it. The battery goes flat and the shutdown sequence doesn't complete in sleep mode.

Not to say this is the case, but I haven't seen too many Toshibas that die outright. Normally they just get too old. I've been fixing computers since the mid 90's and seen a few in that time.

[glennzo]

Hello Bert. Thanks for taking the time to reply. It's been over a week now and the laptop has been running like a champ. No hiccups, no refusal to boot, nothing. It just boots and works as expected.