Hi, I seem to be having a strange problem with my Toshiba M35-S456 (Special Edition) laptop. I have had it for a little over a year with no problems at all. Yesterday I was using the laptop as usual and left it for about 15 mins powered on. When I came back the screen was blank. There was no response from the mouse or keyboard so I tried rebooting by pressing down the power button. After rebooting I saw the “In touch with Toshiba” screen as usual and then the screen went blank again! This keeps repeating on rebooting and I cannot go any further. All my LEDs work fine, I can hear the fan running fine, the CD drive makes the usual sounds but the laptop does not go any further after the Toshiba screen. I have been using laptops and desktops for a few years now and never seen such a problem. Kindly advise on what the problem could be and if there is a solution. Thanks.

Try another Hard Drive if you can't access the origional one. Could be going bad.

thanks fastco. any other suggestions by anyone? it will take me a while to get hold of a spare hard drive.

Well, you could try booting a copy of Knoppix live cd from the cdrom or the original setup cd. With Knoppix you could see if you can "see" the mounted hard drive, if not then it may be the hard drive. I was thinking it could be memory too. If knoppix or the original setup cd doesn't boot it maybe memory. If its out of warranty and you have more than one memory card then switch them out and see if it runs on one or the other memory sticks. Xp will run on 256mb.
Your bios may have to be set to "boot from cdrom first then hard drive" to be able to boot knoppix from the cdrom especially if the hd is bad.

ok here's what all i've already tried

1. cannot access BIOS, F2 (to access BIOS) does not do anything
2. i have 1 512 mb memory stick. i put it in another slot and tried booting, nothing happened.
3. tried hooking up laptop to external monitor, dont get any picture, not even the in touch with tohiba screen.
4. i can access boot options (by pressing F12) but no matter what I choose, nothing happens.

i'm beginning to wonder if its either bad memory or video card. i hope its not the mobo. please advise on what to do next.

If you can access boot options and it displays the options on the screen... it seems that the video card works, probably the cheapest thing to try is memory unless you have access to another hd. If you can't access the bios it could be memory. I have read that hard drives will do crazy things to a computer too. I know you said that all of your lights work but try the simple things first...make sure you are getting good power by changing from one wall outlet to another. You can also check your power cord by measureing the DC voltage where it plugs into the computer. Mine is 19volts dc as stated on the power adaptor.