Toshiba laptop shuts down on ac power

I have a Toshiba Satelitte P205D. It was running Vista. A month or so ago, it started shutting down hard at different times, under different programs. After a while we discovered it would run fine on the battery, but not the AC power. We would charge it, disconnect, then run as long as the battery would last. It did not do this for the last year or so. Got tired of pulling the battery to reboot, so I had to buy the boot discs (this is mom's old computer and of course the discs disappeared), reslam to Vista, then upgraded to 7 with all the bad press on Vista. Even prior to loading any software, running IE7, it will still shut down hard. Fan seems to be running OK and not blocked with dust.
Any ideas?

 

Here's a baffling update. My son thought maybe it was just the monitor. Hooked a second with extended desktop. It ran fine for a while, even on AC power. Now it started doing it again. It shuts down even on battery power. No suggestions? Buy a new one?

 

I would run a hard drive diagnostic.

I have seen failing hard drives do this kind of thing.

This is a basic HDD utility, which I have found useful. It is basically a monitoring tool, but, it can give you insight into the drive's health.

http://majorgeeks.com/HDD_Health_d3654.html

Let us know what the percentage is, and what the drive's status is (i.e., Excellent, Fair, Critical).

At four years old, or so, the drive may be hurting a bit.

 

It appears that link sends me to a PCTools registry mechanic program that I must purchase to get anywhere. Is that true? Did I hit the wrong link?

 

Sorry, I did hit the wrong link. I got the HDD program running. It says 98% healthy and the temp gage is not halfway up. It did not come up with any ID on the drive however - not sure what that means. Thanks for your help.

 

Hi Board,

Recently had a similar problem with an older Gateway Laptop. It could not even get through an XP install without numerous errors. It was putting out plenty of air from the cooling fan but did feel a little too hot. I was able to load XP running on the battery. Processor runs a half speed on batt thus cooler. This one was easy as it has a cover on the bottom that exposes the heatsink and fan - one unit. Comes out easily. It did not look too dirty but cleaned out the fins anyway and replaced the heatsink compound. Now runs much much cooler on batt. No further problems. Google for method of cleaning your paticular model. May be easy.

Good Luck, Jim

 

Well, that's good to hear.

However, it leaves the power circuits themselves suspect.

This could be a power supply issue. You haven't received any thermal shutdown errors, have you?

As suggested, you could try a thorough cleaning, and some fresh thermal gel between the heat sink, and the CPU.

 

Agreed with the temp suggestions. If you're still interested in running some drive diagnostics, you might try Free PC Audit, a stand-alone system information tool - I've found it pretty reliable with finding OEMs.

 

Hi Board and All,

Oops! I mis-spoke about temp after the cleaning. Should have said " runs much much cooler on AC" not "Batt". No problems now with AC or batt.

Jim

 

I had heard that advice somewhere... was hoping there was something else. The part that makes me wonder, is at times it will shut down right after starting up, barely time to run and heat up. As soon as I finish tiling the shower, I try the thorough cleaning suggestion. Will post the results asap.
Thanks for all the help.

 

Sorry about taking so long to get back (the shower tile is done). Here is the latest. The hard drive monitor program suggested prior, says the performance is 98% - excellant and the temp is low.
Was snooping around a Toshiba support site and found they offered a BIOS update on several models for sudden shut downs. I think I ran that correctly, but still no luck. Over the Xmas break, we stripped it down to clean it out. I thought it looked very clean, certainly much better than the towers I've opened over the years. In addition, I saw no cooling fins on the CPU and it appeared to be hard wired, so not sured the cooling goop is an option. Does that sound right for a laptop - hard wired to the motherboard?

 

Sorry about taking so long to get back (the shower tile is done). Here is the latest. The hard drive monitor program suggested prior, says the performance is 98% - excellant and the temp is low.
Was snooping around a Toshiba support site and found they offered a BIOS update on several models for sudden shut downs. I think I ran that correctly, but still no luck. Over the Xmas break, we stripped it down to clean it out. I thought it looked very clean, certainly much better than the towers I've opened over the years. In addition, I saw no cooling fins on the CPU and it appeared to be hard wired, so not sured the cooling goop is an option. Does that sound right for a laptop - hard wired to the motherboard?

 

Nothing like a freshly tiled shower.

It's fairly common for mobile CPUs to be stripped down (OEM considerations for both weight and cost) - just one of the natures of the beast we have to contend with in the computer world.

Not real sure which direction to take at this point, if the HDD is testing good. You might take a good look at your supply voltages in BIOS, see if anything's amiss there. While in BIOS, make sure everything's set for default Safe settings.

Another shot: boot into Safe Mode, run the machine through some stresses for a while, see if you get a crash.