I run a refurbishing division of an electronics recycling and disposal firm, and as such I work on restoring laptops and desktop computers. Of the last batch of laptops I started fixing two were relatively new satellite A215 model laptops, both of which were having startup issues. After stripping them down seperately I finally figured out what was making them freeze, but cannot figure out why, or how to fix it.
Essentially both systems will freeze showing the toshiba startup screen, but before reaching the bios or post information if they have optical drives plugged in. If no drives are plugged in they boot and run fine. One of the systems work sporadically with the optical drive, even installing an operating system before it stopped working entirely, while the other will simply not move past the start screen with the drive in.
Both the bios and the boot menu will not come up when the symptoms appear if the optical drives are plugged in. Mind you these are two seperate optical drives, and I tried switching them to identical results. If you hit the f2 or f12 keys for bios or boot they will say "loading bios" or "loading boot menu" on the bottom of the screen, seemingly indicating that its getting hung up early on in the post but not failing to the extent that it won't take keyboard commands.
I googled around with different search terms in regards to this but found nothing. When I head back into the office next week I will try some different cd drives, but it seems unlikely that both of these dvd drives were faulty in an identical way, and if they were I have never seen an optical drive fail in a way that completely halted startup.
I am perplexed, and would be interested to hear back from anyone with ideas, suggestions, or similar experiences.
Thanks.
Essentially both systems will freeze showing the toshiba startup screen, but before reaching the bios or post information if they have optical drives plugged in. If no drives are plugged in they boot and run fine. One of the systems work sporadically with the optical drive, even installing an operating system before it stopped working entirely, while the other will simply not move past the start screen with the drive in.
Both the bios and the boot menu will not come up when the symptoms appear if the optical drives are plugged in. Mind you these are two seperate optical drives, and I tried switching them to identical results. If you hit the f2 or f12 keys for bios or boot they will say "loading bios" or "loading boot menu" on the bottom of the screen, seemingly indicating that its getting hung up early on in the post but not failing to the extent that it won't take keyboard commands.
I googled around with different search terms in regards to this but found nothing. When I head back into the office next week I will try some different cd drives, but it seems unlikely that both of these dvd drives were faulty in an identical way, and if they were I have never seen an optical drive fail in a way that completely halted startup.
I am perplexed, and would be interested to hear back from anyone with ideas, suggestions, or similar experiences.
Thanks.