Computer Trouble- New Symptom

[Syka]

I got Euripides, a Toshiba T135D-S1325RD, about 2.5 weeks ago. I started using him exactly 2 weeks ago.

This Tuesday or Thursday (I can't remember which, but it was during class and I think it was Tuesday), I let him idle on battery power and he went to sleep. When I turned him back on, the screen just stayed blank. He was going, but not working. There were no odd noises. Turning him off then back on solved the issue. I thought nothing of it

Yesterday I booted him up from shut down on battery power again (I've used him several times in the intervening days), and it got to the log in screen and then went blank after just a couple seconds. I turned him off and back on again and he worked fine. I chalked it up to weird battery issues. Last night when I got home from work, the same thing happened except this time in the middle of the start up noise so it made a funny sound (like when a song starts skipping), then the screen went blank again. I was on adapter power this time. Shut down, turn back on, fine.


Basically, Euripides has taken to not wanting to work on the first try. I'm taking him in to Geek Squad today (I got a 3 year warranty on him), and will have him back by Tuesday but still...do you guys have any thoughts of what is happening?


Other than this, I love him and Win7. I'm just worried now.

[Reinboom]

Toshiba tends to not assemble their laptops very well...

I can immediately think of one of two problems this can be. If I may have you do a couple bits of testing.

First (excess charge issues):
Unplug the laptop and remove the battery. Hold the power button down for a full minute. Place the battery back in and try to turn it on.


Second (backlight problems):
If the screen still hasn't come up, hold the laptop under a bright light while turned on. If you can make out any sort of design as though the monitor was alive, then your backlight is busted. Replace the laptop.


There might also be wiring issues. Do you have a warranty?

[Syka]

I've got the 3 year extended Best Buy Warranty. It includes a lemon policy- they'll replace it if 3 attempts to fix it fail. My family has an...interesting history with big ticket items being faulty, so we always get warranties.

I'm taking him in in about an hour or so, so I'm going to let them run the diagnostics and all that jazz. I do know that the screen has that grayish color that means it's ON, it's just not DOING anything. My iPhone did that to me a couple times, so I know the color difference, lol. Other than that, I've never seen any designs on the screen.

I'm also waiting to turn him on until we get to the store so that I can try and recreate it. Knowing my luck, he'll turn on fine but...worth a shot.

ETA: I'll be so sad if I have to go with another computer. I've been loving him.

[Reinboom]

So the backlight is on, wonderful!

If it turns on for them then it very well is most likely the charge issue.

Toshiba (as well as a couple other brands) as I said tend to have oddities in their laptops. In what I'm expecting, it is has excessive charge held going to the monitor. Laptop power management usually partially turns off certain pieces of the computer in order to relieve power problems. The thing that most commonly gets shut off is the monitor display.


Windows 7 has a special option to help manage this, you should be able to send more power to the processor without much issue which should deter this.
...however... I'm not that familiar with 7 yet and have only used it on a desktop.
It'll take me a bit to figure out where that setting is.

[dehro]

I'm by no means an expert, but I'll suggest something that's happened to me and puzzled me for a while...
the fan didn't work properly and it caused my laptop to seize up without warning whenever it felt like...
fortunately this lasted only a short while before the fan broke down completely.

[purple gelatinous cube o' Doom]

I've never heard anything good about Toshiba laptops. I had two friends in college who had them, and they were broken more than they worked. This seems to be a very troubling trend with Toshiba laptops to me. I know when I get my next laptop, I'm certainly going to look at Consumer Reports. Apparently Toshiba has great customer service though. I'm mind of surprised you went with the Geek Squad warranty. In my experience, they aren't always the most knowledgeable, and they send a lot of computers out. I've with experience with my last laptop, get the extended manufacturer warranty. They usually do a better job, and get it back to you faster. When I had issues with my laptop (got it at CompUSA before they went under) it took them three weeks minimum to get it back. Whenever I sent it directly to HP, I got back in under a week.

[Syka]

I have heard...troubling things about Toshiba tech/customer support. Just trying to get a question about a discount answered took an hour, 3 disconnects, and 4 departments...and a full circle and a half to get answered.

Meanwhile, I've dealt with Geek Squad a few times. I've traded out 2 MP3 players (replacement plan, no questions asked, although both times were legit- one had the front panel separating from the body, one's software was incompatible with Vista). I also got my desktop through them with a 3 year warranty. After 9 months it would not boot up (but turned on) and made a squealing noise...it took 3 times, but I eventually got it to make the noise for them (it was intermittent that it didn't work) and they knew EXACTLY what was wrong. 2 years later and it's never done it again.


tl;dr, I've heard bad things about Toshiba support (plus personal experience) and had nothing but good dealings with Geek Squad.

Rein, I think it's actually exactly what you said in the first example. Tech Guy mentioned even his Win7 laptop has the issues, and taking the battery out and hitting the power button before putting it back in discharges the power on the motherboard....or whatever the tech reason is. He's never heard of issues with Win7 Pro, but Win7 Home seems to do it. And it is apparently common across laptop brands.

This appears to be supported by a good friend of mine who says his Win7 laptop does the same thing (he doesn't know if he has Pro or Home, though).

I'm going to talk to our campus IT guy, who I'm actually doing a class project with, and see what he's heard of it.

(He also did the battery trick on mine prior to turning it on...so of course it didn't freeze up on him. )

[Syka]

OK....new problem. I was working on my computer for about 20 minutes when it suddenly froze and then the screen shut off.

Backlight was still on, computer was still on. Screen- no go.

I'd been downloading the Zune software, had my iPhone hooked up, and was running Firefox and Word. I had my IT friend (yay connections) look at it real quick and apparently it was trying to connect to myspace.com or something RIGHT before it died. I wasn't on Myspace. At all. It's not even on my quicklinks, bookmarks, or frequently visited sites.

I ran Norton and Malware Bytes on Tuesday evening, with no problems showing up. He doesn't THINK it's a virus, but it could potentially be despite the clean scans.




We also looked at the event logs from the previous times it did it on start up (which Best Buy didn't do) and saw that there was some error in the connection or something.



So...I'm taking it back tonight to let them run a full diagnostic and hopefully fix my poor Euripides. But do you guys have any advice that could explain the random psuedo-crash?