Laptop powers on but won't boot, blank screen. What is wrong here?

TheBoyConor

Hello,

I have a friend's Toshiba Satellite L350D 12M. It has windows Vista.
The laptop has sat dead for 2.5 years because the charger socket had been pushed into the case and so she could not charge it. It was given to me to repair.

So i opened the case, and reattached the charger socket in the right place, reassembled, replacing the keyboard and other ribbon connectors for touchpad, power and multimedia keys. Then I plugged it in. It began charging, orange charge light lit up. All good i thought.

I went to switch it on and it powers up, power light comes on, fan spins up, HDD spins up. But then nothing more. The screen remains totally blank, no "TOSHIBA" startup screen, POST, boot screen or anything. The screen backlight doesn't even come on. I checked the screen closely with my phone torch to see was anything on it in case the backlight was gone, but no, there is nothing on the screen.
The fan and HDD continue to spin for perhaps 5 minutes and then it automatically powers down again.
Although the HDD is powered and spinning away, there is no HDD activity, no HDD light flashes and no read-write clicks or sounds.

I have googled things like hard reset for this model and have tried things like:
- remove and replace battery, pressing SHIFT + F8 + Power button
- remove battery, hold power for 60 seconds, replace battery and power up.

Neither of these have worked.

I then thought the HDD might be shot so I took it out and hooked it up to my PC through a SATA-USB adapter. HDD works perfect, reads, writes. I could get into user folder and see all their files and pictures etc. So the HDD is good and not the problem.

Any ideas on this? Any known problems with this model?
What else could I try? Might it be banjaxed?
Although I know it is very old, I would really like to get it going just for the satisfaction of the project.

ednwireland

sounds like the motherboard or CPU are gone

CMOS battery might be work looking at

advertsfox

Two things to try - firstly, connect to an external monitor / display in case it's the display backlight.

Second thing to try - reseat the RAM or replace it with just 1 module (if it has two) - try both of them separate to each other in case 1 is bad.

TheBoyConor

The CMOS battery did cross my mind. It might be gone since the laptop has been left idle for a few years.

I tried an external screen too actually. Nothing. I checked the screen closely with a torch to see was any text coming up in case the backlight was gone. Nothing on the screen.
But I must try the Fn+F5 key to flip between laptop and external screen. I'll give that another go.

I'll try reseating & swapping the RAM, then I'll change the CMOS battery.

Also, the original charger is long lost.
The charger from my Samsung R60 will fit and is of the required output voltage, 19V so i used this to charge. Could this have blown something? I thought being the same voltage as the laptop requires it would be fine. Stickers on both say 19V.

Could a MB or CPU go bad just from being left idle and unused for a few years?

that laptop is from 2009 with some seriously out-dated hardware - not worth saving.

TheBoyConor

I know. But if there was a relatively straightforward way to get it working then it would be worth the effort. Buying a new laptop is going to cost her a lot of money which she doesn't really have. She only wants to use it for Word, pictures and a bit of internet anyway.

the cpu is so under-powered by today's standards that it would just drive you mad even if you got it working. it just won't handle modern websites for browsing at all really.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Athlon+64+X2+QL-62&id=44

you'd want something with 2000 to 2500 rating really on that benchmark.

buy something on adverts for 100 to 150 euro (maybe with an ssd for 20 euro more) and you'd be much better served - that's not a lot of money.

better than wasting time on that tbh.

e.g could probably bargain this down to 120 or so and it will run well with an i3 that is still fine and 6gb ram and ssd

https://www.adverts.ie/laptops/lenovo-e530-intel-i3-6gb-ram-120ssd-1tb-hdd-15-6-hdmi-usb-3-0-office-2016/18229878

the battery probably won't be great but hey.

TheBoyConor

Thanks, but I am not asking for recommendations on a new or replacement laptop just yet. I have been asked to get this one going and I am going to do my best effort at it.

If it turns out to be dead and unsalvagable then I'll advise her that a replacement is the best thing. I will cross that bridge when I come to it/

ok. could be as others have said be

1. dead cmos
2. hard-drive gone maybe (edit you have checked that)
3. possibly damaged using wrong charger or not receiving the power the correct way - connection may look the same, but terminals could be different

keep going by all means but I would dump it.

TheBoyConor

I think if the RAM slot swap and the CMOS replacment don't work, i'll have to call it a day.

Hmm, connection looks same but it is definitely 19V DC. And these co-axial power connectors are always - on the outer shell and + on the inner contact.

you're probably right - if it's powering on is probably taking the power correctly.

could change bios to boot from usb and try to run linux. (if you can get into bios)

if that works could indicate corrupt windows

I wouldn't waste too much time on this!

TheBoyConor

No I can't get to bios screen.

Even the usual "TOSHIBA" in red that usually comes up on these didn't appear. The screen is completely blank and no backlight even.

TheBoyConor

TheBoyConor wrote: »

No I can't get to bios screen.

Even the usual "TOSHIBA" in red that usually comes up on these didn't appear. The screen is completely blank and no backlight even.

no idea really.

swap ram - try running 1 slot on own even

cmos

then if nothing - scrap heap.

CoBo55

Did you try removing the battery and booting it on mains only. Conversely try it on battery only. Without a display your options are very limited.

TheBoyConor

Yes I have tried all three combinations, battery and cable, cable only, battery only.
Same craic either way. Powers on, spins up but nothing happens.

The lights are on but nobody's home.

von Smallhausen

Have you tried, taking out the battery and the charger. Pressing the power button for about 60 seconds and then putting the charger back in and powering on. Considering it was sitting idle for 2 years, the CMOS battery could be dead too.

TheBoyConor

Yes I have tried that last night. No joy.

I'm hoping a new CMOS battery or RAM slot swap might get it going. If not I think it may be goosed.

How would one reset the BIOS on this laptop? Usually there is an RTC reset thingy like a 2 pin header on a MB where you short the two pins to reset it.

TheBoyConor

Well having been at a loss last night as to what was wrong or what to do, I came home this evening and went to have another go. I opened the lid and flippantly tapped the power button not expecting much, just another "brain dead" spin up of the hardware. To my amazement the screen lit up, showed the TOSHIBA screen and it started booting.ðŸ˜ðŸ˜ðŸ˜

Before the boot menu appeared it did in fact show a warning about a failed CMOS battery. I hit F1 to continue and it actually went on to resume the last user session from perhaps 2 and a half years ago.

Strange that it did it without me doing anything.
Anyone have any ideas as to how this Lazarus resurrection might have happened?
Might the components have been damp having not been used in so long? But it was stored in a indoor and not a shed.

TheBoyConor

TheBoyConor wrote: »

Well having been at a loss last night as to what was wrong or what to do, I came home this evening and went to have another go. I opened the lid and flippantly tapped the power button not expecting much, just another "brain dead" spin up of the hardware. To my amazement the screen lit up, showed the TOSHIBA screen and it started booting.ðŸ˜ðŸ˜ðŸ˜

Before the boot menu appeared it did in fact show a warning about a failed CMOS battery. I hit F1 to continue and it actually went on to resume the last user session from perhaps 2 and a half years ago.

Strange that it did it without me doing anything.
Anyone have any ideas as to how this Lazarus resurrection might have happened?
Might the components have been damp having not been used in so long? But it was stored in a indoor and not a shed.

no idea. can only think of a bad connection suddenly deciding to work or the ram deciding to function

does it work twice a row!?

actually bought that lenovo laptop that I linked earlier on adverts for my dad.

core i3 that still holds up ok, 6gb ram and ssd in a solid if uninspiring lenovo package (they always have great keyboards) which will do him fine for browsing, ms office / google sheets/ docs stuff that he uses for 145 delivered. comes with win 10 pro and ms office also.

he was doggedly sticking to a slow really old laptop so this will be an upgrade.

TheBoyConor

Shíte.

It was turning on and off perfectly last night, but hibernating and resuming the session. I had some issues accssing folder and files in the users folder. Seems the permissions are a bit screwed up.

So I tried an actual full restart to see if that would do anything and it went into a boot loop.

I checked out the specs on it and it meets the minimum for windows 10. I might salvage the data on the disk and do a fresh install of windows 10 and see what happens.

That is good glasso, hopefully it serves him well, looks a good deal. I think I am just as stubborn as your dad! lol

CoBo55

TheBoyConor wrote: »

Shíte.

It was turning on and off perfectly last night, but hibernating and resuming the session. I had some issues accssing folder and files in the users folder. Seems the permissions are a bit screwed up.

So I tried an actual full restart to see if that would do anything and it went into a boot loop.

I checked out the specs on it and it meets the minimum for windows 10. I might salvage the data on the disk and do a fresh install of windows 10 and see what happens.

That is good glasso, hopefully it serves him well, looks a good deal. I think I am just as stubborn as your dad! lol

It would be ideal for a Linux distro.

TheBoyConor

Perhaps. I think I will stick with W10 though since I am familiar with installing that. Time to make an installation USB.....

Anyone know anything about the permissions issue or come across it before.
Hopefully I will be able to hook the HDD to my own PC and copy out all of the documents, pictures, music and other stuff for her and put it back onto the refurbished laptop.

advertsfox

Windows 10 will kill that laptop with updates off the bat (its an AMD X2 Dual-Core) with a 5400RPM hard drive. Install Windows 7 at the most, this thing started it's life with Vista so 10 will literally be awful on the machine.

would really put in an ssd for 20 euro or not much more for 120gb

maybe upgrade the wifi card also for a tenner to something more modern

that cpu is really weak though - it's not just a question of windows really - as I said before websites are more complicated than 10 years ago and browsing will be fairly painful compared to a more powerful cpu

as well as stuff like youtube etc where hardware support for modern codecs will be not there.

windows 10 allows you to delay / not install updates now if you don't want to

TheBoyConor

I have another laptop, a Samsung R60 that is running W7 as an upgrade from XP. It is kinda slow alright but once started up it works away fine for day to day stuff like youtube etc.

TheBoyConor

TheBoyConor wrote: »

I have another laptop, a Samsung R60 that is running W7 as an upgrade from XP. It is kinda slow alright but once started up it works away fine for day to day stuff like youtube etc.

an ssd is worth it for the quick windows boot up time alone.

TheBoyConor

Yes I might suggest that and see does she feel OK about buying one for €20 or €30 quid.

CoBo55

TheBoyConor wrote: »

Perhaps. I think I will stick with W10 though since I am familiar with installing that. Time to make an installation USB.....

Anyone know anything about the permissions issue or come across it before.
Hopefully I will be able to hook the HDD to my own PC and copy out all of the documents, pictures, music and other stuff for her and put it back onto the refurbished laptop.

Do an upgrade first from within vista, when it finishes ( hopefully before the next Olympics) do a disc cleanup including system files, this will allow you to delete the huge windows old folder. If it turns out to be running like a dog you can then clean install it and you won't run into activation issues.

Prominent_Dawg

Different laptop but this has worked for me in the past! https://youtu.be/p5jRKV2ptBM

TheBoyConor

So it is back booted up again and working fine now, starting, shutting down and restarting perfectly.

I hooked the HDD up to my PC via the adapter again and it turns out the disk was corrupted in some way as I couldn't even access the main drive partition on the HDD. After a bit of research I used CHKDSK command in cmd app to recover the disk. Might be handy for future reference... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ix13LRGmzk8

She has bought the SSD so I might as well install it anyway. She also bought new RAM since it was only €2 per card apparently.

TheBoyConor

TheBoyConor wrote: »

So it is back booted up again and working fine now, starting, shutting down and restarting perfectly.

I hooked the HDD up to my PC via the adapter again and it turns out the disk was corrupted in some way as I couldn't even access the main drive partition on the HDD. After a bit of research I used CHKDSK command in cmd app to recover the disk. Might be handy for future reference... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ix13LRGmzk8

She has bought the SSD so I might as well install it anyway. She also bought new RAM since it was only €2 per card apparently.

the ssd will make a big difference - waiting 10 to 20 seconds to boot up versus 1 to 2 minutes and then the time after login when windows is sorting out the initial processes before you can actually interact with the machine also being vastly improved is a massive user experience boost!

must be 2gb ram stick that she bought - they are going for nothing these days as there is no real market for them.

if that is bringing it from 4gb to 6gb it's a useful boost as a browser with a fair number of tabs will go over 4gb ram usage.

TheBoyConor

Yes, she bought 2x 2GB sticks. So that'll be a doubling of the RAM as it only has 2x 1GB at the moment. Plus i imagine that when the RAM is full, the OS will overflow into a virtual RAM on the SSD, which will also respond much faster than a virtual RAM file on a HDD.

I'd say at this point it is the CPU that will be the limiting factor in this machine's performance.

I was playing with it last night and it seems to be working perfectly though, booting up quick enough and I also sorted out the user folders' permissions issue.

Still, now that I have the W10 notion, I will still just go ahead and install W10 on the SSD and see how well it runs with the upgrade. If it turns out to be a slow disaster, I will just suggest she stay with the HDD with Vista which now appears to be fine.

win 10 on 4gb ram is ok once you don't have a lot of tabs open in chrome with several chrome extensions installed but all modern browsers on windows are memory hogs. none is much better than any other in that respect really.

the ssd will be quicker as a pagefile than a spinning hd obviously.

TheBoyConor

The laptop has the 64 bit AMD processor but would it be recommended to install the 64 bit W10 or the 32 bit version? Would the 32 perform better on a machine with limited specs?

To help things I'd intend on stripping down a lot of the fluff in W10 that adds to the performance burden. Ie, optimise it for performance and disable all the visual effects like transparency, animations etc. Should help some bit.

I don't really have experience of comparing the 2 side-by-side but if the laptop is only going to have max 4gb ram then maybe win 32 might be better.

the main advantage (aside from some software only running on 64-bit and things like virtualisation) is that win 64 can use more than 4gb ram.

but the 32-bit might run a bit faster - not 100% tho.

try both if you have the time

TheBoyConor

Hmm. Thanks.

I think I'll try 64 bit since the laptop is designed for it in theory. If it works good, then great. If it is too slow, i can roll back and do a 32 bit installation.

This is a very good learning experience more than anything I guess. Interesting.

can you let us know how you got on, be interesting to see how that processor copes tbh

windows seems a lot less clone-friendly these days, on a tangent. theres hidden/hard to erase partitions on the old windows drive that can cause issues when you try to wipe and use it as storage (say after installing an ssd)

TheBoyConor

No I'm not cloning onto an SSD for this. I plan on doing a fresh install of W10 onto the new 240GB SATA SSD which I just put into the laptop last night. I might do the install tonight and then manually transfer over all of the files and pictures in the users folder by hooking the HDD up to a USB adapter.

I did do a W10 clone onto an NVMe SSD in a PCIe adapter card in my own retro desktop build on the other thread. Worked fine. It is definitely faster.

TheBoyConor

I installed the 64 bit version of Windows 10 Pro last night. After things settled down it seemed to run fine, reasonably responsive and internet worked fine. Youtube seemed a little slow and janky but it could be my internet connection too because it isn't great.

I had trouble installing the Radeon X1250 graphics driver with the ATI Catalyst Control Centre. No windows 10 support for that. I had to manually install the driver through device manager.

Although it seems to run fine I notice the fan is blowing hard and hot. I suspect the CPU is under a fair bit of pressure to run the OS.

I have researched whether a 32 bit OS will run faster than a 64bit OS on a PC with low end or legacy hardware. It seems to be inconclusive. Some say there is no difference, some say it will run marginally faster but hardly worth the effort, some say it is better to run 64 bit if the hardware supports it.

The ability of 64 bit to utilise far more ram is nullified in this laptop as max ram the motherboard can take is 4GB which is also the ram limit of 32 bit OS. So that benefit of 64 over 32 is not applicable here.

So I have come up with a plan. Tonight I plan on installing the 32 bit of Windows version on a separate partition on the SSD. I will then install HW monitor on both OSs to log CPU, ram usage etc. I'll use the laptop for a while using both OSs. I will then be able to figure out whether the 32 or 64 bit version runs better or if there is no discernible difference.

I plan to activate the OS using a registry tweak i used before for my retro build.

CoBo55

It could be bogging down trying to do updates, any obvious cpu hogs in task manager?

TheBoyConor

Possibly. I'll leave it run for the evening and see does it settle down. I'll shut down as many unnecessary apps and services as I can and get rid of the visual effects.

TheBoyConor

So to update, a few weeks ago I installed a 32bit OS on a separate partition to compare performance. There did not seem to be any noticeable difference between both OSs while using. One was not any faster or slower than the other.
I decided to do a little experiment. Since video playback is arguably one of the most intensive things I played a youtube video full screen and then opened the HW monitor to see CPU utilisation. I'd then take a manual log of the CPU usage every few seconds while the video played for about 5 minutes. I did this process with both 32 and 64 bit systems. I averaged both and to my surprise the 64 bit system actually had a lower CPU usage on average, 77%, while the 32 bit system averaged 89% usage over the duration of the video. Good result from a very basic experiment.

Anyway, the laptop while obviously not near as fast as a newer PC is very usable. It seems to handle everday tasks like browsing internet, using Microsoft office, spotify, browsing photos, etc with relative ease. A little latency but not an unacceptable amount.

To finish off, this evening I handed the laptop back to a very grateful and excited Polish lady who was keen to see all her old photos again, which I had transferred. I was rewarded with a new rucksack, a bottle of cherry vodka and bamboo travel mug, water bottle, and chocolate all in a new laptop backpack. She also bought me a soldering iron. Not a bad deal to be fair. Thank you to all of you for your advice.