Fearing the Worst (Laptop Motherboard)

I have a 3 year old Toshiba Tecra S2 laptop with XP Pro SP2. Ever since I got it overheating was a huge issue. Most CPU intensive tasks would cause it to shut down after prolonged use. I guess most Toshiba laptops have this problem, which sucks. For the most part I've been careful and have been able to deal with it. Recently, however there have been some strange problems that I think may have stemmed from the heat issues.

I turned it on the other day, and it tells me there are new PCI devices detected. It turns out all of my networking hardware wasn't recognized all of a sudden. I reinstalled the necessary drivers and got them working again, but while I was doing this the computer would randomly freeze. The only way to recover from these freezes was a manual restart. After the freezing started happening, about 2/3 of the time the LCD screen wouldn't turn on when I started the computer. Now, when I finally get it running, it sometimes says there are new PCI devices again. Sometimes its the networking stuff again, and sometimes its the HD controller. Also, the more I try to use it the more frequently the freezing occurs.

I am fearing that something has gone wrong with the motherboard, possibly due to to the CPU's heat over the years. Has anyone seen anything like this before? Is my motherboard on its way out or is there any hope of repairing it?

Much thanks,
Tom

 

I'm afarid I know very little about that laptop but I think you are almost certainly correct in your assumption that overheating is causing the problem. You really need to check whether the cooling fins around the CPU are clear of gunk as well as the cooling fan.

Here is a link on how to disassemble your particular model:
http://www.irisvista.com/tech/laptops/Toshiba_Tecra_S2/pull_apart_laptop_1.htm

 

In addition to what Yargwel suggested, you may have bad memory also... and just recently I saw something very strange with a laptop: when the battery was connected, the PC would power up OK, but would not detect the hard drive, and would not boot to Windows. If you unplugged the power cord and ran off just the battery, it was OK about half the time. If you removed the battery, and ran off only the power cord, it was OK all of the time.... laptops.... strange beings them laptops....