Never even heard of a Satellite 8250. Is this the newest, greatest, blah blah...? But I've got the same problem as you.

In many of the newer Toshiba's, there's no fiddling with the LCD's...

Floppy drives are, by and large, compatible. However, in your case, since yours in internal - meaning that dimensions, mounting, connector positioning, color of the drive bezel, etc., are absolutely...

You mean to tell me that (1) the machine is powered down, and (2) the hard disk activity light blinks on its own - while all the other indicator lights are out? We're in X-File territory now... ...

If the speakers are disconnected, and there's no disks in his floppy/cd-rom drives, then the only thing that can click when powering down would be the hard drive, in which case, it can't be cured by...

LCD backlight is merely a cold cathode florescent tube (CCFT), or cold florescent light (CFL) tube - it either works or it doesn't. I'm inclined to think that your inverter is failing (it hasn't...

Does it see the cd-rom/dvd and boot from it?

Duh.... You seem to have forgotten about the ants. Now I didn't believe for one nanosecond that the spill got onto the inverter (it's a little piece of power board that would've shorted and left...

Oh... Don't have a yahoo or msn id. Now as to your other question regarding buying a working motherboard, you're asking me for an assessment that's based on the results of three pretty darn...

LOL.. Dunno. The hard disk controller functions inside these systems are ... minimal - if anything's gonna fail, it oughta be coming from the circuitry on the hard drive itself. There's no HDD...

Reckon so ... I'd always stick it into another laptop just to make sure - 'cause when a hard drive goes down there's either a lot of gigabytes to recover, or a lotta gigabytes of software and crap...

That was quick. The next thing I'd try would be to remove the CD/DVD module, but keep the hard drive module installed, and start the machine - just to make sure that the hard drive error ain't...

System ain't seeing your hard drive. Since it is a removable module (on the left side of your system, usually held in by one, or two screws at the bottom of your machine), why not remove it,...

So you're doing the private-sale route, which, according to just about everybody, is considered a high risk maneuver. I however, have had the pleasure (and good fortune) of going thru several...

Also, I guess I was trying to steer you away from the EVO-series. I like it, but I think it's a disaster waiting to happen. Why? I'm fundamentally opposed to machines that are lightweight with a lot...

Horizontal and vertical eh... But external is still okay, I take it. I don't know. See, here's what I think: the ants invaded your EVO, which tells me that (1) the sugarly goodies were probably...

In my last post, I meant "region", not country - since within the regions the machine line-up are largely the same. Some manufacturers offer international warranties, too. I've had the pleasure of...

Nah, can't do that. I can, however, look around to see if I can find you any good vendors who'll stand by their products. What I was trying to say earlier was that since it'll be cheaper and easier...

Well well well, a nice ending is always good to hear. BTW, my "new computer" satire was really directed at Mr. Get-Rid-of-Windows-98, not you...

:idea: Gee... why not go buy a whole new computer that comes with XP installed? All ya need is a nod from uncle Visa.

I'm situated in the Cultural Sahara (aka Ka-li-fore-nia) - sorry guys... I had thought you were overseas. Anywho... since your machine is still working, there's no hurry at all (is there?) So...

Actually, when I stuck the drives with XP back into their rightful systems, they're okay - took a while during their first load, but subsequent reboots were okay. You mean to tell me that if your...

Good ...

Is there a modem card and/or a network card installed in the system? I've seen this happen before when I was setting up a Hitachi Mx laptop (which had bios-configurable COM1, COM2,...

Toshiba's BIOS and Toshiba's firmware on its hard drives (all 5 have Toshiba drives) are causing the problem here. None of these systems have any problems whatsoever seeing non-Toshiba hard drives...

If the system sees the drive, then it's not the device driver. I'm sure you've tried different CDs and gotten the same results, right? Could be just a simple, straightforward case of a bad drive. ...

Jesus H. Count of Monte Cristo... I think you've managed to touch upon the dark side of laptop servicing... I still think there's sweet stuff inside your laptop - which is what attracted the ants....

Okay, so you've got a virgin installation of Windows 98. Good... that narrows things down further... The reason why I asked about partitioning is to make sure that you hard drive wasn't broken down...

Okay... my problem got resolved, and I found out why. Nasty nasty... if anyone's interested, just ask and I'll post further notes on this chapter. Otherwise, it'll be a secret between me, and...

Suze,

128MB is plenty for 98SE, and if there's more than 100MB worth of free space, then it ain't slowing due to a lack of hard drive space. Doesn't sould like you missed too much in terms of...

Hmmm... did you capture, detain, and interrogate that ... ant? The ant could've sensed a pile of sugar inside your laptop, you know... Was there a spill involving soft drinks, Starbucks coffee, or...

How much memory and how much disk space is in the system? C'mon, guys... 98SE is not that buggy :rolleyes:

I'm probably too late on this one, but it sounded like the wrong BIOS was flashed into this LM-P system. As I recall, the LM-Ps were sold with both active (TFT) and passive (DSTN) displays. Now, in...

The Gateway P3C is an old one - so I'm speaking from memory since I have not come into contact with one of these in years. As I remembered it, this system does not have a built-in modem, so when you...

Here's the lowdown on LCD bulbs:

LCD displays are not sealed, not insofar as the backlight tubes go. My experience has been that most of 'em aren't "enclosed" to the point where replacing the...

Is it the same make and model monitor? You'd better give us the brand and model so we can avoid it... :)

Doesn't look like anyone can overcome what is basically a design flaw on these Presarios (and the problem is by no means unique to Compaq) - the plastics ain't strong enough to support the amount of...

If any of you are getting lines on your LCD display (like a horizontal or a vertical), it's usually a bad LCD display (the panel itself has a very "partial", or "localized" failure). Someone here...

Maybe someone has an idea on this one:

I own several Toshiba 2805 laptops - ranging from the S201 model (Celeron 650) to the faster S302 (PIII 750) models. They're working perfectly and I'm...

Is your CD-ROM even being recognized by the system at all? Check your CMOS setup (which can usually be entered into "before" Windows starts booting) - in most cases, the IDE device 0 in your system...