View Full Version : what happen to this laptop?
jamewoong
Nov 29th, 2008, 05:15 PM
yesteday, i was using my old laptop to write some texts... it's a Toshiba Satellite A100
then i power it off
today, I try to open it as usual, but nothing happen... it's like it is out of power. No sign of life...
When I plug AC adapter, the laptop appears to be dead and there is no LED activity at all.
what could be the problem of this laptop?
pitz
Nov 29th, 2008, 05:53 PM
Use a voltmeter, check the power brick to make sure its generating an output voltage on the terminals.
If it is, then its likely that your laptop's power supply and/or motherboard has died. In which case, if its an old laptop, you may as well remove the hard drive (to recover your data), and throw the rest of it out.
jamewoong
Nov 29th, 2008, 05:57 PM
The question is even by using the battery (No AC), no led activity at all...
Evil Baby
Nov 29th, 2008, 06:51 PM
The question is even by using the battery (No AC), no led activity at all...
like pitz said, it's more then likely your mobo or psu. The hard drive shouldn't be too difficult to get at, just a few screws. You can pick up an external bay or tigerdirect for ~$20. That way you'll have an external drive and all of your files.
I doubt you are still under warrenty so chances are it's just cheaper to pick up another laptop.
pitz
Nov 30th, 2008, 02:15 PM
Just doing a little bit more research, sounds like power supply issues on the Toshiba A100 are fairly common.
Unfortunately, nobody's really found a fix.
jamewoong
Nov 30th, 2008, 02:29 PM
Are those problem happen randomly (bad luck) or it is because of bad use?
pitz
Nov 30th, 2008, 03:05 PM
Are those problem happen randomly (bad luck) or it is because of bad use?
Bad design perhaps?
If it makes you feel any better, most of the Dell laptops built with Nvidia graphics chips over the past few years have a design defect that will cause them to prematurely die as well. The root cause of failure is metal fatigue caused by thermal cycling.
That's definitely one of the downsides of owning a laptop (or many pre-built, proprietary PC's); you can't just easily replace one piece at a time with a part from a different manufacturer.