Toshiba 6100 Satellite Pro crashes on startup

[nodnerb2]

Hi,
I have a buddy who has one of these machines and it is having a few troubles to put it mildly.

Upon start up it gets a check sum error and asks you to pres F1 This initiates a Scandisk run that takes about 5 mins and then it crashes as it carries on loading Windows XP Home.

If the Scandisk proces is bypassed it starts up and allows me to get to the progs menu before crashing.

Following Toshibas instructions to get it to boot of the restore CD by holding down the C Key on bootup till the logo appears then release don't seem to do diddly squat.

Could it be the RTC (CMOS)Battery error that is causing this?

Any suggections appreciated

[muno]

You press F12 (or F2) for boot menu, from there you should be able to choose cdrom as bootup device.

The 6100 model is horrible, we have about 1000 of them and 50% of them have gone to service due to manuf. defect.

[nodnerb2]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply.

How the hell do you find anyone who will replace the battery if needed. It states in the Owners Manual that this isn't an end user operation but fails to suggect where you can send it to be done.

The Toshiba website in the UK doesn't seem to have anything to do with PC Support.

Any ideas?

[muno]

I don't know about that. The models however pretty frequently said to press F1 because rtc battery is bad. I think mostly because the batterbattery (not rtc battery) had ran out. Or in fact it hadn't ran out, the laptop just lost the battery and refused to startup.
Everything was fine if the battery was removed and replaced.

However, I don't actually believe the rtc battery is dead on that.

[nodnerb2]

Hi,

Since my reply to your post above I called a Toshiba Consumer Electronics service place in the UK that stated at least twice on their home page that they didn't deal with PC Service.

A friendly lady there asked me the problem and then transferred me to the service dept who asked me the serial No etc and again what the problem was then informed me that it was probably covered by warranty(I have seen elsewhere about a 650,000 unit recall) and to arrange a free collection and return to call another number and quote a service ref no she gave me.

I have tried a few times and all I get is "sorry we are unable to take your call at the moment please leave a message". It makes me think that possibly I am not the only one calling that No.

As I have to get on the road in an hour or so to complete my marathon drive which saw me do just under 900 miles yesterday I will leave the details with the Owner of the laptop and post back when he tells me what the outcome was.

[Chooch0]

Hi, the Sat Pro 6100 have a number of odd issues involving power downs and amber flashing leds and not booting up, from my own repair experiences I have found two major problems which seem common to this laptop.
1/. Poor soldering or dry solder joints on the main power board connections to the main board may cause major failures, ie major amounts of current drawn by the power board, this may take out two surface mounted fuses, one on the power board and one on the back edge of the main board, near the fan side! Numerous 8 pin voltage regulaters/switches also could go up I have replaced 5 of these on one unit! the toshiba marks on these are TPC8103 a usable equivalent is a silicone systems 4420. this device is an insulated gate device with a running current of 10Amps.
2/. The power board is only screwed down with two screws and where it's connector joins to the mother board the connection is only held by a quite distant screw, a result is a connection that could become detached while the unit is still on. A good dob of sillicone rubber at this end of the power connector join to the motherboard should stop this from happening.
I have in my investigations heard that a detaching video card could cause some odd amber flashing leds and no boot problems, but to their credit Toshiba appear to have installed a fix for this with the addition of a small metal clip which holds the video card down.
All in all Toshiba Sat Pro 6100 is a good laptop but it do's have a lot of problem areas, but at least it is an easy unit to dissasemble and work on.
Cheer's LK

[ced94]

Hi all,
My 6100 has just break down :-(
These last days, it was simply freezing, and a good reset some time after was solving the issue.
Last time I heard a strange noize (something like a fuse) and it stops.
Now, no way to power up.
I had hard disk troubles a few time ago, but I thing this is also coming from the same root cause.
I gess I have a power issue.

Can someone explain me how to open this box and have a look ?
And how to fix it, if it's only some kind of fuse issue


Thanks !

Cedric