Memory stick broke off in internal reader now system will not boot

Toshiba Satellite A215-S4757 running Vista Home Premium SP1. Memory stick was stuck, was yanked on and part still remains in the reader. tried getting it out with tweezers etc. No luck.

Now on boot the system hangs on splash screen.

Any idea where I can find a service manual for this Toshiba? I searched but had no luck. I thought if I could disconnect the reader from the mainboard I could at least boot into windows. This Toshiba appears difficult to disassemble.

I can get into safemode. I thought I could disable the driver but either that does not work or I am not looking in the right area of device manager. Where is the driver for the memory card reader located?

Thanks!

 

Thanks but looks like it is a user manual. I read it but unfortunately does not detail how to take this laptop apart.

 

Let's see you can boot in Safe Mode so it would be a Windows driver problem.

What device did you try to disable? See anything that says Texas Instruments in Device Manager?

 

Aren't we talking about a USB memory stick here (in which case you would want to disable the appropriate USB driver in Device Manager)?

 

I read it as the 5-in-1 card reader. I guess we need some clarification.

 

No, I've re-read it and you're almost certainly right. I was thrown by calling it a memory stick.
I read that someone removed one by using a piece of metal and some adhesive tape. Tried a safety pin before that, and it no longer works. Take care.

 

The interface on the front of the laptop that reads sd, memory stick, and xd cards.

For some reason now I am not able to boot into safe mode even though I was able to before.

 

Ouch! What happens when you try to boot? Do you get a POST beep? What else? Can you hear the hard drive running and does the HD LED go on (if there is one)? What shows on the screen?

 

Okay, this is getting weird.
I booted and the system goes through it's startup motion, I see the welcome to Toshiba screen, then the Microsoft screen with the bar on the bottom. That bar just continues, never freezes.

So I rebooted, then went into BIOS. I disabled USB legacy support(I have no idea why I did it). I rebooted, the computer went through chkdsk motions and now I am able to login.

I am afraid to reboot now in the fear that I will just revert back to square one.

I am now looking at device manager in normal mode. When I was able to get into device manager before(in Safe Mode) I had disabled the PCMCIA adapter(Texas Instruments PCIxx12 Cardbus Controller) and SD host adapter(SDA Standard Compliant SD Host Controller). Disabling them before did not seem to help in getting the system to boot.

Any recommendations before I cross my fingers and reboot this?

 

Is there anyway to disable the SD card in BIOS?

Check your boot order in BIOS is SD card mentioned. (particularly look for SD or floppy in the boot order)

There is a site that has tutorials for Toshiba laptops but the A215 does not have a disassembly tutorial yet. Toshiba is notorious for not letting any info out about how to service their products yourself.

 

I rebooted, went back into BIOS and nothing that I could see related to SD card. I did change the boot order at that time to HDD first.

Was able to get back into normal mode again!

For now it appears it is working again. Not sure why but thanks for all your help!

 

I'm glad it is working. I did just see a thread where chkdsk fixed things for someone else. So it could have something to do with that.

I Don't want to mess with success but having looked around I remember having seen some mentions of "firewire" "1394" mentioned in relation to the TI card reader. You might want to look around in Device Manager for such an entry just to be aware of if it exists. Just in case trouble pops up in the future.

 

Nice work.
I just wonder whether dismantling the laptop will solve your problem anyway (I've done this once and there are a lot of very small screws, so it's quite an exercise as well). It's likely that the card reader will be a sealed unit anyway. Have you had a good look inside with a good light and maybe a magnifying glass to see what's actually going on in there?