Start up issues

Laptop: Toshiba Satellite (from 2006)
OS: Win7
Issue: Freezes on start up or from out of a sleep/hibernate state

This was occurring when I had the original hardware and software installed and it seemed to be an issue of the hard dive as it would freeze even when up and running and at times made some interesting noises. I have since replaced the hard drive with a Western Digital Scorpio Black wd5000bpkt 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive. During the install of Win7 it froze up twice but ultimately installed fine. After the install and during the config of my wireless networking it froze again. Since the completion of the install and system config there have been no issues and I was even able to do all the system updates, copy my pics/docs/music over from the external HD and install some programs. I have power cycled the computer several times and brought it in and out of sleep and hibernate a few times as well with no issues. My question is does anyone think that the freezing during install could mean a different issue; i.e. the mother board?

 

Could be the motherboard or a Ram issue.I would keep an eye on it in case it should start again!!!!

 

Well it has been working fine until about 10 minutes ago. I had the web browser up (Fire Fox), Facebook open and it was sitting idle for just a few moments and it was frozen' no other programs running.

Is there a way without going to a shop to determine if there is a motherboard or RAM issue? Really trying to avoid buying a new computer.

 

RAM is easy enough to test, grab memtest86, burn the ISO and boot from the CD and if you see even one error then there is at least one bad stick, so check them one by one after that. running it for a few minutes should suffice.

Last thing to try is a hardware torture test like OCCT which will write to many charts up until you either stop it or your machine crashes, it could give us a hint as to if there's a hardware issue. You got nothing to lose at this point. Too bad there's no mobo test app. At least we may be able to eliminate another possible cause.

 

So I ran the Mem test and it came out fine. I then ran the OCCT test and the CPU OCCT test would only run for about 2 minutes and then it would say the test was cancelled as there was an error detected. The CPU LinPack ran fine.

Because of the upload limits I have to split up the reports. The 4 on this post are from the OCCT test.

 

The last report here is from the OCCT test and the rest from LinPack

 

These are the last from the LinPack test. I ran the OCCT test several times with the same results. Also, when I ran OCCT as infinite it said I didn't have enough memory so I had to change it to Auto. I am not familiar with this program so I am unsure if it is relevant.

 

Post #5, pane 4 looks very weird to me as there is no 15V circuit on any power supply ever made and it seems this is the culprit. Do you have a DVOM to double check that figure as it should be 12V? Other than that, everything looks OK though the CPU does get a bit hot.

 

I do not have a DVOM. What could possibly cause this? The HD is brand new so I am sure it is not that and as mentioned the RAM test was fine and wouldn't cause this anyway. Could this be a motherboard issue? Honestly I am ready to just send back the HD and get a new laptop but if this is fixable obviously that would be preferred.

 

Like I said, power supply. Yours may be giving too many volts. Better power supplies have over voltage protection. I'm afraid you'll have to bring the machine to the shop, just wait until someone else confirms my guesses.

 

OK, the one you ID'd was a LinPack test which finished fine first time out (although there was the spike in Voltage as you indicated). Since you were thinking it was a power supply issue I re-ran the test with the computer unplugged and had basically the same results on the voltage as the first time. However the test did not finish without error. The error received was "Core #1 over max value. Value reached 87, Max value 85". See attachment.

I also reexamined some of the other results and the voltage is stable through the test in the OCCT (see attachment) test keeping between 14.3 and 14.5; on every LinPack test however there was the spike in voltage.

 

Just to be sure I ran the test w/o the battery and got the same results; less the voltage readout since it doesn't measure that w/o the batt in.

 

OK, so I had a diagnostic ran and it came back fine. The Dx was done at Compusa and they said the hardware was fine. It was a Windows stress test and a hardware Dx.

The deal is that I am still having the same issue. However as I mentioned previously it runs fine on Batt only but when the AC is plugged in is when it crashes.

Is there a way to test the battery or the AC plug? Also could there be an interplay between the two?