I have a Toshiba laptop that will not boot. What caused it, I have no clue. It does not get beyond the the first screen with Toshiba logo. Please help!

did it ever boot if so try resetting some of the jumpers on the motherbourd. As a last resort us the reset disks.

I do not know how to reset the jumpers. Also It goes NO WHERE. Does not get past original screen.

did it ever boot if so try resetting some of the jumpers on the motherbourd. As a last resort us the reset disks.

Not to be rude but this is not very good advice. Which jumpers? Why? Why reset?

Why not first troubleshoot the problem and find out exactly what it is instead of just randomly trying things in hopes one of them works!?!?

If the unit is still under warranty, call Toshiba's tech support.

If it's not then phone around to local computer stores to find a place that does indeed work on Toshiba's (with Toshiba certified technicians) and bring it in to them. I suspect you have data on that unit you don't want to lose (if you don't have backups now, in the future you'll want to ensure you do proper backups regularly).

There could be many reasons the unit isn't booting and it will take a trained technician sitting down and running tests to figure out just what the problem is.

Can you be a bit more descriptive? Your info is pretty vague. You don't even mention what specs your Toshiba has. It's like me asking you "...how many fingers am I holding up?"

When you turn it on, what do you hear and see? Do you hear the fan kick on, see the Toshiba logo, hear the hard drive spin up, hear it accessing the hard drive, see the summary screen, hear a beep, screen blank out, etc.? Can you get into the bios?

Try booting from a CD. If that works your hard drive might be bad or your OS needs attention. Try new memory. Try replacing the fan. Try a new bios battery. Try removing anything removeable on the laptop (except for power) like USB sticks, keyboards, mice, etc. then booting.

Try the simple stuff first.

Can you boot all the way into Windows in Safe mode?
(Press F8 repeatedly while booting, choose Safe Mode when the Menu appears)

If it won't do that, does Enable VGA mode work?
(Press F8 repeatedly while booting, choose Enable VGA Mode when the Menu appears)

Have you tried Last Known Good configuration?
(Press F8 repeatedly while booting, choose Last Known Good ..... when the Menu appears)

If you can't get that far....

If you haven't recently changed ram or flashed the bios, sometimes a laptop won't boot because it has been subjected to being dropped or other physical jarring and that loosened the ram or hard drive connections.
Remove the AC adapter and the main battery.
Make sure the ram and hard drive are seated properly.
Install the main battery, plug in the AC adapter if you like, try the computer.

You could try booting with a bootable CD, but the Bios boot order settings must be set to boot from a CD drive before any hard drive, and even if that is correct that won't work if the ram has a poor connection, or possibly if you have installed ram that is not compatible with the mboard's chipset.

Check your hard drive with the manufacturer's diagnostics.
See the latter part of response 1 in this:
http://www.computing.net/windows95/...

If you don't have a floppy drive, you can get a CD image diagnostic utility from most hard drive manufacturer's web sites, but obviously you would need to make a burned CD, preferably a CD-R for best compatibilty, on another computer if you need to.

clarince63

This computer is a laptop. If there are any clear CMOS jumpers they certainly aren't easily accessable.

Skorpio

In the future it would be helpful to use a more descriptive title than please help.

You need to describe what happened just before this issue arose. Did you make any changes to the settings or install any new hardware or software?

Thanks guys for all the assistance. This is the machine my wife uses so I am not sure if she has made changes. To be honest she changes things all the time. I say something but it is not my machine so I really do not say anything until I have to figure out what it is. Ok enough of the venting.

The machine is a P4 with XP home. It will not get past the 1st screen with the Toshiba logo so F8 is not is not an option. I got it started once but I had to get to work my wife turned of and now I can not get it back up. If anyone has any suggestions please help.

Do you have any restore disks that go with the laptop? If you were to restore back to factory settings I think that would teach your wife a lesson. Perhaps she wouldn't be so reckless in the future.

Every manufacturer has a different method for repair/restore. I am not familiar with toshiba's method. Maybe someone else here will come along.

Toshiba doesn't appear to have any drive fitness utility available.

"It will not get past the 1st screen with the Toshiba logo so F8 is not is not an option."

Press F8 repeatedly as soon as the computer starts to boot - don't hold down the key - you may be waiting too long.

You could also try......
Remove the AC adapter and the main battery.
Make sure the hard drive and ram are properly seated.
Then install and make sure the main battery is properly seated.
Try the computer.

"The machine is a P4 with XP home"

There's only one thing in that you haven't already told us in your specs in the first post.
It would be helpful for us to know what model it is - look for a label with that on it, probably on the underside of it.