Hey guys,

I have a Toshiba Tecra S1 laptop made in 2004, I installed Ubuntu on it about 3 months back and it had bin working fine. today, I set the laptop down, and i got wierd lines across the screen about 1/4 the way from the top, then more lines showed up running up the sceen, everything was frozen so I force reboted the laptop. When I tried to turn it on I got beeping which I now know is the BIOS. the bees go, 1 short pause 1 long (pause three short pause 2 short one long) then what is in brackets just repeats over and over untill i force shut down. Its an old computer and repairs would shurly cost money I can't spend. Any ideas will be helpfull, Thanks

also, I put different RAM in it from another Toshiba laptop and no luck, even with both ram, differnt slots and anything I could think of.

Cam

It is probably as simple as replacing the drive. If you have the restore disk set, you can install any drive you choose to purchase. Then use an external enclosure to copy your files from the old drive to the new...

This can't be the problem as I tried to boot without the hard drive and the same thing happened, I can't even acces the bios

I have the same laptop and Toshiba utilizes Insyde Software for their BIOS.

Here is the problem: You can't find Insyde BIOS beep codes. Toshiba has chosen not to release them. Do a search for Tecra S1 Insyde BIOS beep codes and you'll see what I mean. You'll read the frustration of many people. It appears Toshiba wants you to send it in to their technicians.

Perhaps your ribbon to your monitor is going but I defer to raybay because he has considreable knowledge and experience troubleshooting and repairing laptops.

ok thanks for your help, I had heard the same thing, I was thinking I'd just buy an old used one and use the old hard drive, and RAM but it sure does piss me off that they would do something like that. However I'm surprised NOONE has posted the codes on the internet.....

Yeah, I am also amazed also that no posted them especially since Insyde is still a viable company. It is stunts like this that has me swear off Toshiba. This Tecra was given to me by my sister who's former company was giving them away.

You could tell it was used hard by the multiple user accounts and what was mind blowing was their IT department failed to upgrade the XP Pro to SP1! I wound up having to replace the 40 gig Hitachi HD with a faster 120 gig Seagate. By the way, the latest and last BIOS is only designed for 120 gig drives and less.

I also replaced the RAM to 2 gigs worth of Kingston PC2100 which cost some $ but still worth it. Though the motherboard will accept PC2700 it will only read it at 2100 regardless.

This laptop does everything I need it to but if it ever goes I will part it out and get a Lenova or HP with a 64 bit OS. But right now I don't have to spend the $.

Good luck and if you find those BIOS Beep Codes please let us know.

Yah I got this one free too, I sure wouldent purchase this kinda stuff, although it does work very well.