Member Avatar for lavalspatz

Hey,

I really hope you can help me on this. Recently I bought a cheap Laptop Toshiba Tecra A4 at Ebay. It was said there is a hard drive defect only...it's not.

When I try to switch the laptop on the lamps go on and the DVD drive starts to spin..everything normal. But then after about 3 seconds it switches off before it can reach the bootscreen - like I would remove the power cable.
The very weird thing is that sometimes, let's say every 1 of 15 tries the laptop starts like it should and boots up from my linux live-CD. Then I can work for hours and nothing bad happens ... until I want to switch it on again. Then the game starts from the very beginning.

I already tried to:

- remove the defect hard disk
- remove the power cable only
- remove only the battery
- replace the RAM or use only one of the two
- to remove both RAM
- remove the power cable and the battery overnight to reset the CMOS

...nothing changed.

I would be very pleased if anyone could help me. So far I found only unanswered forum entries with that problem in the WWW - so at least, I am not the only one going mad :-)

Thanks a lot

lavalspatz

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Dani AI

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Given 's report of an almost-immediate shutdown on power‑on with only rare successful boots, and 's sensible tip about bad connections, the troubleshooting should be narrowed to power-delivery and intermittent short/fault checks rather than OS or disk issues. 's short‑circuit idea is also plausible and worth treating systematically.

A focused workflow that usually finds these faults:

  • Verify the adapter and DC jack with a multimeter: note the adapter voltage at the barrel, then measure the same point on the board before and after the ~3s shutdown. If voltage collapses, suspect the adapter, jack soldering or the input regulator. Wiggle the jack while powered (carefully) to see if the fault is mechanical.
  • Isolate removable daughterboards (Wi‑Fi, CardBus, modem, optical bay) and boot the bare system; intermittent shorts often come from add‑ons or a damaged connector. Test the machine powered outside the case on an insulated surface to rule out chassis shorts.
  • Bypass the power switch header briefly (use the board pins marked for power-on) to exclude a failing switch/front‑panel board. Only attempt this if comfortable and with battery removed.

Inspect visually under good light and magnification for bulging/collapsed electrolytic capacitors, burn marks, corrosion or cracked solder joints near the DC input and voltage regulators. Clean suspicious contacts with isopropyl alcohol and reseat any sockets. Remove the CMOS coin cell for a few minutes if accessible to clear BIOS settings.

If these checks don’t reveal the problem, the fault is likely on the laptop’s power‑regulation circuitry or a cracked BGA solder joint; those require either board‑level repair (reflow/replacement) or a donor motherboard. For safety, avoid high‑risk fixes without ESD precautions and consider a professional service if multimeter/board work is unfamiliar.

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Member Avatar for masini

do not want to scare you but you should also try again with cables.
You say that only the battery does not work?
When I think is a short circuit somewhere. Perhaps it's related to opening and closing the DVD. Reach there and do something soon?
Who knows?

Edited by ~s.o.s~ because: Snipped fake sig
Member Avatar for lavalspatz

Hey thanks for trying to help me :-)

Its seems like you got me wrong. The described effect happens all the time. It doesn't matter if only the battery or only the power cable or both together are connected - so I assume the power support itself is ok.
I just tried out if the problem is related to the DVD drive. I switched the laptop on with the DVD lid open, with empty and closed DVD and with an loaded drive. No positive effect either.

I can add that in 1 of maybe 50 the laptop doesn't switch off after 3 seconds but the fan starts to be pretty loud and the system holds before boot screen and stays like this until I turn it off.

Any more ideas?


do not want to scare you but you should also try again with cables.
You say that only the battery does not work?
When I think is a short circuit somewhere. Perhaps it's related to opening and closing the DVD. Reach there and do something soon?
Who knows?

Edited by ~s.o.s~ because: snipped fake sig from quoted text
Member Avatar for Bob_180_Bob

Hi,
I can only suggest a very good internal clean of all fans and contacts. If you can dismantle the machine without doing any damage, then strip it to the bare shell and clean anything and everything you can get to. If you can run the machine in this state, try, and apply slight pressure on different points of the motherboard as it boots. There may be a simple bad connection that is connected when the machine is held in a different way. The fact that it will start (1 in 50) shows that everything works sometimes, but to find what is not working (49 in 50) could be very hard. I would suggest a service tech or buy another.

Member Avatar for pinkigreen

Hi,
Thank you for sharing information in the blog. I will pass this blog to my friends and hope someone will get benefit from it. Keep it up.

Regard .

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