Toshiba Laptop troubleshooting

[jack10525]

I need some help troubleshooting a Toshiba Satellite. I couldn't find the model but the serial number is 1800-S254. I don't know much history on it. A friend from work told me it didn't work. Well I tried turning it on and it keeps rebooting itself once it gets to the windows xp splash screen. I thought maybe it was the battery. I checked the batt with a multimeter and it showed good power but the computer will not boot on the battery alone. It needs the ac adapter plugged in. Would a dead battery cause this problem? I have tried to go into safe mode and safe mode command prompt but it still just tries to restart. It seems like a power problem to me. I am not getting any beeps or other errors.

[thefultonhow]

Sounds like a software problem to me. Try reinstalling XP. Make sure to back up your friend's data first, though.

If you have an actual XP OEM disk (Home or Pro, depending on what is on there now) you can try a repair install. That will mean you won't have to back up the data or reinstall programs afterwards.

[jack10525]

Well that's the problem. I can't reinstall the OS. I've tried and it keeps trying to reboot. Similar to a faulty power supply.

[thefultonhow]

Where does it reboot in the OS install process? Did you hold down C to have it boot from CD?

[jack10525]

Yep tried to "C" key too. No matter what I do it just keeps looping from the windows xp screen to a loading setup screen.....

[thefultonhow]

Sorry, but I'm not understanding this very well. When do you see the Windows XP screen? When do you see the setup screen? If you see both of them in the same boot, then there's something wacky. When you hold down the C key you should NOT see the XP screen -- it should go straight to setup. I have a feeling this "setup screen" that you're talking about is a BSOD.

[jack10525]

Yeah it is pretty confusing. If I just just press the power button after a few seconds ( about 5)the screen flickers and I get the Toshiba Splash screen. It lets you know that you can press F12 to enter set up. After a few more seconds (about 10) I see the Windows XP startup splash screen. That appears to be loading. It has the little windows progress bar showing the computer is warming up. After about 10 seconds a blue screen comes on and says: "Setup is being restarted..." It will loop like this until I do something like press "C" or Del, F8..... I have gone to the menu screens to try to boot into safe mode, last known good and anything else I can think of. I am gonna take the computer completely apart, clean and check all connections. I do appreciated the help. Maybe you could give me some other suggestions.

[thefultonhow]

Okay... lat's back up here. Are you using the included restore CD? Or a real XP CD?

Before you take the laptop apart, run Memtest and a drive fitness test.

[KSpark]

I had this problem on my desktop computer, so I don't think it's the battery. I fixed it by merely unplugging the computer and waiting...don't know how that exactly helped, but it did.

[jack10525]

Ok here's where I'm at. (Nice grammer huh?) Ok lets review the facts. Friend gives me computer and says it doesn't "work". He's not very computer literate and doesn't go into anymore detail. I try to turn it on to see what's going on. It goes like this: push power button, fan starts, lights blink, normal start up appears to be working. First the toshiba splash screens appears, next windows xp splash screen appears (looks like it is a successful boot but....) then a blue window with "setup is being restarted....." appears. This is NOT a BSOD. This whole process takes maybe 30-40 seconds. It then repeats this process unless I do something like press Del, F8, F12 etc...I tried all the usual things too. I tried booting to the recovery console, booting into safe mode. Nothing worked. It just kept looking to me like a faulty power supply/switch. I ended up taking the whole laptop apart. As I take it apart I notice that most of the screws are missing. Someone has already tried to take it apart. I continue and get it all apart and clean everything along the way. When I put it back together I made sure all connections were tight. I get it back together and try booting again and same problem still exists. I decided to try reinstalling XP. I use my an oem version. Well I got it to load windows and it seems to be working fine. It looks like the previous owner corrupted a file or something but I still can't believe I was unable to resolve the issue without deleting everything and reinstalling. Well I've still got to load all the utilities but it seems to be working. Incidentally it's a Toshiba Satellite 1800. It has a 1.0 ghz cpu with 256 mb ram. Once I got it up and running I checked it out. It doesn't seem to run that bad for old tech. Thanks guys.....

[thefultonhow]

I don't think taking the laptop apart was necessary. The most you may have needed to do was reseat the CD-ROM drive. The "Setup is being restarted" screen comes up when Windows XP setup fails in the middle of the GUI portion. It sounds like there was a failed installation before and all that needed to happen was a reinstall. Even though you pressed C to boot from CD, if you never saw the character-mode setup routine, it didn't boot from CD. So the likely culprit was just a CD-ROM drive that wasn't properly seated.