# Toshiba Satellia M35X-S149 Won't Boot



## Matthew538 (Jun 29, 2005)

I bought my Toshiba laptop off ebay at the end of Feb. 2005. It had only been used a couple of months. I've had just about no problems with this computer and have been quite pleased with it!
Aside from a issue with the AC power connector inside the laptop coming loose, which I was able to take care of myself.
That was about a month and a half ago.

I was playing Tetris last night, with the AC adapter plugged in and out of the blue it just shut off. However the AC Power and Charge lights were still on.
I pushed the power button to try and fire it back up, The HD Blinks once for half a second, the CPU fan is on for about 5 seconds, the blue power button/light stays on as well as the small green one on the front of the unit and nothing else happens.
The monitor doesn't turn on, it doesn't read any drives, no beeps or sounds, nothing.
Also, I can't turn it off without pulling the Battery+AC Adapter.

I plan on taking the unit into a Toshiba Repair place tomorrow, but I wanted to see if anyone could help me avoid that. If it could be fixed some easier way than being without it forever or for however many weeks it takes to get it fixed.

Toshiba Satellite M35X-S149
1.5GHz Celeron M, 512MB Ram, 60GB HD, 15.4" Widescreen, 64MB Shared Video and 802.11G Atheros intergrated Wireless.

Any help is greatly apperaited, Thank you.

-Matthew Currie


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## ebackhus (Apr 21, 2005)

Was it noticably hot?


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## Matthew538 (Jun 29, 2005)

I knew I forgot to mention something.
It wasn't exactly ice cold, but it was about half as hot as it has been at times. So, it wasn't perfect but it's been worse and been fine.


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## JamesO (Mar 30, 2005)

Man I feel for you Toshiba owners. 

Never a dull moment.

These platforms have a bunch of issues:
D.C. connector breaking loose from the mother board - seems you know about this one!
Overheating issues, usually caused by the heat sinks getting clogged.
Static discharge issues, possibly casuing the BOIS to flake??
Wireless not working very well and giving problems after coming out of standby.

Good luck with Toshiba repair, they are VERY busy these days and do not seem inclined to help anyone out of tough situations. Looks like the motherboard replacement has been the cure all suggestion for many. A tough nut to swallow on such a new machine!

Also look at this, may come in handy:

http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/tais/su/su_sc_dtlView.jsp?soid=950322

Good luck, let us know what happens.

JamesO


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## Matthew538 (Jun 29, 2005)

*KITT: "All systems go, Michael."*

Well, I just got my Toshiba back from the repair place today. 
They said the "System Board" was bad. I'm just going to take a random guess that's the motherboard. Well everything seems to be in good order, I took that one panel off. It just snaps in and out, I looked inside, the Power connector seems to be put on rather well. So even though it's a new board Thankfully I won't have that to worry about.

My hard drive which is 50gb+ full is intact, that's all I really cared about.
Now I shall go out and buy a 50 pack of blank CDs. 
I used to burn a lot with my old laptop, but I stopped with this one since it seemed so reliable.
I'm going to be burning a lot of back-up CDs, I'm never going to worry about losing data again.

All is well. Case closed... for now.


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## JamesO (Mar 30, 2005)

Quick questions about this repair, so hopefully others can get some more insight.

Was this repair covered under warranty?
Turn around was quick, where did you take it?
Did the repair center have the parts in stock or did they have to order them?
Did the repair center indicate they did anything about the static discharge issue?
Did the repair center indicate they had a lot of these Toshiba's coming in?

I would back up everything that is important. Although you should be able to salvage the HD if it does not die. Using a external HD case might allow you to pull info from drive in the future if needed.

JamesO


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## Matthew538 (Jun 29, 2005)

I looked up on Toshiba's site and looked up Toshiba Notebook repair places.
My dad took it to a RadioShack in West Berlin, NJ. (08091)
It was still under the basic 1 year warranty. 

In Store: 6/29/05
Completed Service: 7/6/05

Part Numbers:
K000019660 - System Board
PA3396U-1ACA - AC Adapter
Both it says it cost ".00"
Labor was $55.00
But we didn't have to pay for it.

They replaced my AC adapter... it was a little beat up. My fault.

I wasn't there when it was taken and picked up from the Repair center, (RadioShack) so I'm sorry I can't really answer all your questions. At least not right now. But I will however ask my dad about the Static and if they had a lot of Toshibas coming in that were similar to mine.
Granted the fact it was all completed in good time, I'd say they must have had the parts in stock, or Toshiba or whoever shipped them out ASAP.

At this point, I am a rather pleased Toshiba owner. Even though the computer failed, they fixed the issue in decent time.

I hope some of this info helps, anything else I can try to help you with, just let me know.


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## JamesO (Mar 30, 2005)

Wow, that was a quick and painless turn around!! Even with a 3 day weekend in the middle of repair window.

Sure would be nice if others had this kind of service.

Hope you do not run into the other problems with overheating these seem to have.

James


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## Matthew538 (Jun 29, 2005)

*Follow up...*

Problems again.

System died. Pressed power button. TEN minutes later it booted up. (No kidding). And 5 minutes after boot it dies again.

Taken to Toshiba repair. They gave no answers on those questions from before, sorry.

They did a non-destructive restore and replaced the System Board and gave it back. I finshed backing up the few last files I needed and did the full restore with my Toshiba recovery disc.

Once again... I have everything working for the moment and got the computer back in the same time frame, ect.

Only problem I have is a problem I had with a software glitch I had a while ago before any of these real serious problems.

This thing confuses me.
Okay, I have the same Brand of router and the one I have troubles with. D-Link.
Mine is a 802.11G. 
And my friends is a 802.11B.

I used to be able to connect with no troules to his router. 
[It says Signal Strenth is Exellent, 5 Bars, yet it also says Limited or no Connectivity. And my friends laptop and his wireless card can connect to it with no troubles. I even attemped to use his D-Link 802.11B card and that did the same thing.]

However when I go home or over his girlfriends house, which we both happen to have the same D-Link 802.11G router, I'll be able to connect just fine.
Or any other router I know of I can connect to given I'm in range.

I once had this issue fixed, By updating my drivers and some other things from the Toshiba site. I repeated all those steps with no sucess.

My laptop just HATES this router, apparently.


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## Terrister (Apr 18, 2005)

Look for a hardware reset button on the router. This will reset it to factory defaults. Now go in and reset everything and see if it connects normally. 

If need be, we can move this thread over to networking for more help.


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## Matthew538 (Jun 29, 2005)

Nah, don't worry about it.

Just wanted to make a mention about the same sort of problem that came back... and got fixed again.

I'll shut up now, lol.


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## chita69 (Aug 27, 2005)

Matthew538 said:


> I bought my Toshiba laptop off ebay at the end of Feb. 2005. It had only been used a couple of months. I've had just about no problems with this computer and have been quite pleased with it!
> Aside from a issue with the AC power connector inside the laptop coming loose, which I was able to take care of myself.
> That was about a month and a half ago.
> 
> ...


 How u fix power connect inside laptop yourself, i was trying to open it up by removing all screws at bottom still not able to open it. Pls help me out.

Thx


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## twyrick (Aug 28, 2005)

*Exact same issue noted over here!!*

I do on-site computer service and consulting for a living, and I went to a customer's apartment yesterday, because he said his laptop wouldn't boot up. It happened to be a Toshiba Satellite M35X-S149 that he bought through an educational discount program less than a year ago.

It was obviously well cared for (no scratches on it or anything - would pass for brand new out of the box), yet it had identical symptoms to what was described in Matthew's message. You'd hear the cooling fan spin for about 1 second and the blue power light would come on, but you wouldn't get any kind of display or even hear the hard drive seeking. Only way to get the blue power light to go back out after this was by holding down the power button for about 5 seconds. Pulling out the battery and AC adapter for 30 seconds or so, and letting it sit and cool down had no effect.

This particular customer was upset enough over it that he didn't even want me to send it off for repair! He said if it was this much of a "piece of junk", he couldn't rely on it for his business needs - so he told me to go buy him something different/better.

(The bright side is, he gave me the laptop after I got his new one going... so I guess I'll try to get it repaired myself and get a free laptop out of the deal. But sounds like these are prone to repeat these issues!)




Matthew538 said:


> I was playing Tetris last night, with the AC adapter plugged in and out of the blue it just shut off. However the AC Power and Charge lights were still on.
> I pushed the power button to try and fire it back up, The HD Blinks once for half a second, the CPU fan is on for about 5 seconds, the blue power button/light stays on as well as the small green one on the front of the unit and nothing else happens.
> The monitor doesn't turn on, it doesn't read any drives, no beeps or sounds, nothing.
> Also, I can't turn it off without pulling the Battery+AC Adapter.
> -Matthew Currie


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## Matthew538 (Jun 29, 2005)

I'm the laptop's 2nd owner, and it's still under Warranty through it's serial number.
Toshiba repair, (for me was a local RadioShack) took care of all my problems. 
Even though the process was a bit frustraiting, having the computer plain out fail on me... twice.


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## Matthew538 (Jun 29, 2005)

LOW AND BEHOLD.

My laptop failed with the same issue for a third time.
This time my dad called Toshiba support.
And after making all the general issues null, overheating and bios updates not being the issue.
They told us, "It's a hardware problem." Well thanks a lot!
I did NOT know that.... but anyway... parden me for my last statement.

So Toshiba Support Directed us to a different repair center.
My dad walked in with the laptop set it on the counter and the guy there said right away. "I know EXACTLY what's wrong with it."

One of the speakers isn't grounded properly, creating a static discharge and..................... causing it to spontaneously reboot/shutdown!

Wow. Now I knew something about the static discharge deal, but I didn't know it was the speaker. Very interesting and I learned a few things.

Now, finnally, I think I can rest in peace about this laptop once I get it back this time. Blah. I do hope this helps other people.

PS. The guy said they've fixed over 25 of the M35X-S149 models at their store.


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## JamesO (Mar 30, 2005)

Man, this static issue is posted right on Toshiba's web site. I am surprised this was not addressed all the other times the machine was taken in for repair. This seems like it is probably a "standard" fix when these machines are in for repair??

See this Toshiba link from right in the Toshiba Support page:

http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/...BV_EngineID=ccceaddfjlffggecgfkceghdgngdgnj.0

Let us know if your problem is really sorted, give us an update in a month or so.

JamesO


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## Donathan (Sep 21, 2005)

*Toshiba Satellite problems*

hi my laptop iis giving me trouble ... 
TOSHIBA Satellite S1800-814 
dvd drive 
176 RAM
Pentium 3 1.01ghz
this laptop just keep goining off and also the lcd screen doesnt come on . 
please assist me .. thanx


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## LTLearner (Jul 29, 2009)

My Satelillite M35X-S149 has a AC adapter problem, meaning that when I plug it in, the little lights they blink, instead of being continuosly on, so no power is delivered. It seems to be a common problem with this model. I understood from al oder post of yours, that you had the same problem. Could you please tell me how you solve it?
Thank you


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