I'm going to throw my Toshiba!

[bambeeno82]

Ok I need some advice....

I have a Toshiba Satellite A215 laptop. The screen is not coming on, but all the lights on the keyboard come on, and it shows its charging on the edge by the keys. I can hear the fan start up, sounds as if the thing is normally running, but nothing is on the screen.

I called Toshiba and they did some troubleshooting, and they told me that the problem was the hard drive. I went out and bought a new hard drive, installed it, and put in the restore discs.....still nothing....I have the SAME exact problem.

When a light is shined on the screen, nothing can be seen & when I plug in an external monitor to it, nothing comes on the monitor either. Its as if the computer is working but the screen is crap. I had a friend mention it could be a video card??? Anyone ever heard of this problem or have any recommendations?

Thanks!

 

[Ididmyc600]

Toshiba said it was the hard drive............maybe you didnt explain it properly, or tosh's tech support is manned by the muppets..

its obvious there is something deeper, if you cant see any splash screen or BIOS screen at startup then either the screen is fooked or the video card is gone.

You could (if your able) open the unit up and see if anything has worked loose, not sure about Tosh's but a lot of Dell's are push fit video cards that do work loose.

Also if you plug an external monitor in you have to press the FN key and one of the F keys to activate it..try that first.

 

[bambeeno82]

tried the advice

Ok so I just tried plugging it up to our home computer monitor and pressing the FN & F key and still not working. Its so wierd, its like the screen isnt working but the laptop itself is running....I didnt see anywhere where the video card would be I am assuming its where I cant get to it.

 

[Syquester50]

I seen the same problem in a laptop once before - PC sounds normal ie. fan running, lights etc.... but the screen was totally black like yours. I fixed my freinds laptop with the following steps. It turned out that it had a bad stick of ram and would not boot like yours. It is possible yours has the same problem..... check to see if you have more than one stick of RAM. If so, take one out and then reboot. If no success, put it back in, then take the other one out and reboot again. When it boots you have found the solution. Hopefully this resolves your problem too. Marv

 

[ultragrey]

Can ram be the problem? I am not very much sure, Syquester. Can't it be the screen hardware problem?

 

[hughva]

I've seen this work a couple of times. The point is that RAM can be checked easily and may solve the problem.

Can ram be the problem? I am not very much sure, Syquester. Can't it be the screen hardware problem?