Member Avatar for DigitalDog

I have a refurbished Tosiba Tecra 8100 running Windows 2000, about five years old, that just stopped booting up. (Actually, I have twin computers- with the exact same problem!) I'll hit the power button and it seems to make an effort- but then there's a black screen and no activity. Oddly though, it will every once in a while make it to the login screen before freezing. When pressing the power button to shut it down, it either makes no noise or will beep one long, three short.

I didn't make an changes to the software nor the hardware before this, nor did it have any traumatic experiences. I tried replacing the RAM with no luck, and am at a loss as to what to do now.

Help, please?

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Dani AI

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A focused troubleshooting checklist for the two identical Tecra machines. has already tried memory swaps and raised disk-related checks; the next steps narrow hardware vs OS, preserve data, and use non-destructive tests first.

Start with power and POST isolation. Try booting on AC only (remove the battery) and use a different known-good adapter or outlet. With drives and removable peripherals disconnected, watch for fan/HDD activity and try an external monitor. If the system reaches BIOS/POST without the HDD, the problem is likely the disk or OS; if it never reaches POST, suspect motherboard, power circuitry, or graphics.

If the HDD or filesystem looks suspect, boot from rescue media (Linux live USB or Windows Recovery Console) and run SMART and filesystem checks. From Windows Recovery Console run:

chkdsk /r C:

From a Linux rescue environment run smartctl (from smartmontools):

smartctl -a /dev/sda

If the drive clicks, reports many reallocated sectors, or SMART shows failing attributes, image the disk immediately (use a USB adapter and a read-focused imager such as ddrescue) before further writes, then attempt repair on the copy.

Capture beep patterns when powering on (not just on shutdown) and note whether the beep occurs before any video output. Beep codes point to specific POST failures; look up the BIOS vendor beep codes for the laptop model. Also inspect the motherboard for bulging or leaking capacitors and any scorch marks. Because both units failed around the same time, consider a shared environmental cause (power surge, same charger batch) before assuming independent component failures. If data is critical or hardware diagnosis is unclear, stop further destructive tests and consider a professional data-recovery or repair service.

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Member Avatar for DenisOxon

Hi,

A couple of questions

1) how full is your hard disk ? If they are full then windows is slow to start and possibly won't start.

2) Have you defraged disk recently ?

3) Are you running up to date anti-virus software ?

Denis

Member Avatar for DigitalDog

Thanks for replying!

My hard drive isn't all that full, there's about a gig or so of space left.
I don't think I've ever defragged the second, but I was in the process of doing so when the first one kicked the bucket.
And I don't have any anti-virus on the second, the first was up-to-date until the crash.

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