Any proficient laptop troubleshooters out there?

[hansolo77]

Hey guys, got laptop problem I'm hoping somebody can help me with.

A friend of my dad's since I was a kid (I call his "uncle" for crying out loud) had a laptop that stopped working. He gave it to my dad and me over a year ago to try and fix. Dad fiddled with it for a couple minutes and gave up. Passed it to me. I, too, fiddled for a few minutes and also gave up. We put it up on the bookshelf and basically forgot about it until the guy came looking for it. Well, apparently he forgot about it too after so long, and just bought a new one. A couple day ago he was talking with dad on the phone and it came up if we had fixed it or not, he said "no" and he said it was OK since he got a new one. Told us to just pitch it. Dad told me today "You can have it, if you get it fixed, if not, throw it away". So now I got a perfectly good looking laptop in my hands but I can't make it work.

I have everything that came with it. The laptop's battery is dead, but appears to be charging (when plugged into the AC, the AC light is green and the battery light is amber [the book says the battery light blinks when it's full]). I can turn it on, and the power light turns green. But there is no display. I can usually tell if it's on but a blank screen, this screen appears to just be OFF and gets no power at all. I've already tried the manual's troubleshooting tips of "Press the power button for +10 seconds" and "Press Fn+F5 to swap between internal and external monitors". Needless to say, it didn't work.

The laptop is a Toshiba Satellite A55-S1064. The Toshiba website says it was bought in 2006, and thus the warranty has expired as of 2007. I'm willing to try just about anything on this guy, since it's pretty much trash now. If I can't get it to work, I might consider selling it for parts or something on eBay. But since I've always wanted a laptop, and have been practically given this one for nothing, I'm really eager to make it work. I don't mind tearing into it if there is something inside I can do to fix it. If it comes down to needing to send it somewhere for repair though, I might just have to research a bit and see if it's costly.

I've also posted a similar thread over at the Toshiba support forums, but I'd thought I'd give you guys a shot at it too, since were all a bunch of computer techies here.

[Draco1962]

Did you attach it to an external monitor before you attempted the Fn+F5?

[Adultery]

Pop it open and see if the screen connection is intact. Sometimes if you drop it, that connection can come loose.

But basically Toshibas are built on spit and bubble gum, and it's not worth the extra effort if it's gonna cost anything.

[Draco1962]

Before you pop it open, definitely look for an assembly guide. It is possible that the connection to the internal screen is loose as Adultery suggested, or could be an inverter issue. Worse case could be a total GPU failure, hence my question. If you cannot get external video to work, while it may be a connection issue still, likely the GPU is hosed and it may not be separately serviceable from the mobo.

[hansolo77]

I did try to connect it to an external monitor. With the cable unplugged, my monitor said to check the cable, but as soon as I plugged it in, the warning went away, and the standby light started flashing. I tried pressing the Fn+F5 with it attached, but nothing happened. I then followed up by pressing ALL the keys, and the mouse buttons/touchpad with no luck. It's probably the internal video card the more I think about it. He said it just suddenly stopped working, not like he dropped it, or saw the screen slowly fading to dark. I wish it was something SOFTWARE related, I could probably fix that.

I checked on Toshiba's website.. the out of warranty repair is way too costly. They want like $130 to ship it to them and inspect it, then an additional $350 for a screen repair. Yet you can buy a brand new laptop from the same manufacturer that is faster, lighter, with more storage, for less!

[Adultery]

Well I'd use the hdd on my NAS if it was me, so free storage is worth it. :-)

[hansolo77]

Yeah, except it's only 40gb. Not really worth much of anything. I also took it out of the laptop, it's not standard SATA, looks like a custom IDE interface. I was going to put some Infocoms on it, and maybe some Popcap games. It's definately not a workhorse laptop. Would be nice to get working, but I'm not upset or nothing since it was free anyway.