Black Screen of Death?????

Longrangedriver

First of all, I have a Toshiba Satellite P200 17c laptop, which is now sporting a black screen.

Hi all, I was on Boards, on Wednesday night and was browsing away, and I heard some weird noises from the HD. They were like popping sounds, and noticed that the drive was struggling to perform, but I could still work away. A few minutes later the screen went black and I could only see the mouse cursor, in white, so I powered down, via power button. I then restarted, and I got the Toshiba logo as normal, then went to the boot screen for normal/recovery boot. I first chose recovery boot, and it went to the Vista loading screen, then nothing for a few minutes, until the black screen came on again, with the cursor showing, but nothing. I powered down again, and booted from the normal, and the same happened. I then tried to boot from the recovery disk and after it started to load, it went the same way.

I rang Toshiba, they reckon that it could be the board, but it was the HD which was going mad.

Has anyone seen this before? or any ideas what it could be?
Thanks in advance...

Its eight months old from new, and heres the spec:

http://uk.computers.toshiba-europe.com/cgi-bin/ToshibaCSG/jsp/productPage.do?service=UK&PRODUCT_ID=132332&toshibaShop=false

ressem

I saw something similar on a Dell laptop running Vista which developed a bad hard drive soon after purchase. It was failing to load a system file, and didn't bother to display an error message to that effect, just a black screen (though without a mouse pointer in that case ).

It doesn't explain why the recovery cd would not display though.

If you want to look at this possibility anyways:
I would suggest using a linux live CD (knoppix or ubuntu are easy enough) to see whether that works, and to transfer your docs to a USB or network drive.

Then try Hitachi's Hard drive test utility to check the hard drive. http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/download.htm

vir7ual

8 Months old, still within warranty. Leave Toshiba resolve the issue for you. You're better off not doing anything while its within warranty. Get your files off the laptop and send it back.

Longrangedriver

Thanks for the replys lads, I have arranged via Tosh to let them sort it. I have tried booting from Tosh recovery disk and Vista disk, still nothing, also bearly(one flicker in a minute) any motion from the front panel display for the HD. Just have to see what Tosh come up with.

vir7ual

You're better off, at least you wont void the warranty by stripping it down and removing components.

Gary ITR

And if you registered the laptop with toshiba the warranty offer they we're doing when you bought it could entitle you to a full refund. I bought my Toshiba around 4 months ago and if it goes in for a warranty repair I also get a full refund

AngryHippie

Ja. TOshiba do the biz. I've had an Equim something something for over 3 years, Its gone through 4 chargers, but Its run everything from Solid edge to new command and conquer, I keep it backed up on a 300Gb Seagate HD, which has survived over 2 years, I stuck with XP though. Vista was too ropey to upgrade to. 4 of my mates have bought Toshibas on my recommendation over Dell and Sony, and none of them have had a problem. If there is a problem, they sort you out too though:D
Thank you Toshiba.