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Hello folks, I have a Toshiba Equium M50-244 laptop that did work but now doesn't. I press the start button and get the Toshiba press F2 for set up or F12 for boot. Then i get a blank screen! nothing boots up from there on. I can start it in safe mode by hitting F8 and when i select any option on that page it goes straight to blank screen. Any ideas please?

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Useful complement to the good points made by and : their HDD and BIOS checks are valid, but the symptom of seeing the vendor prompt and the Safe Mode menu before the screen goes blank also makes it important to isolate display/video and simple hardware issues before doing anything destructive.

Start with display and simple power resets. Connect an external monitor (VGA/HDMI) and power on to see whether the picture appears there after selecting a boot option. Try the Advanced Boot Options entry "Enable low-resolution video (640x480)" — if that keeps the image visible it points to a graphics driver problem rather than the disk. Do a power drain: remove AC and battery, hold the power button 30 seconds, then try booting with AC only. Listen for HDD activity or unusual beeps or clicks during startup; those are useful clues.

Check RAM and basic board connections before assuming the disk is at fault. Reseat memory modules (and test with one stick at a time) and observe whether the blanking behavior changes. If an external monitor works but the laptop screen goes dark only when Windows starts, suspect the LCD/inverter or LVDS cable rather than the HDD.

Use a bootable USB (Linux live image or Windows install media) to test whether a different OS can reach a usable desktop. If a live USB boots and the display stays active, attention should focus on the Windows install and drivers; if the same blanking happens, hardware (GPU, cable, or board) is more likely. A live USB is also the safest way to back up important files before any invasive repairs.

Safety and next steps: avoid prodding the drive or opening the chassis without ESD precautions. If hardware-level faults (GPU, motherboard, or internal cabling) are indicated, get a local technician estimate and check official Toshiba resources for BIOS updates or known recalls.

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Member Avatar for mdk2k4

More likely is your hard drive, the bios is not recognizing the hard drive. What you should do is to take the hard drive out, put it on a external case, install hard disk sentinel(google it) and see the conditions of it, and depending on the outcome, you should be able to move on to something else if there is nothing wrong with it.

Member Avatar for Seten

If you are using the bootup-screen (logo of vendor, probably Toshiba) or something like that it is called, press ESC by boot. It will show you which HDD are in, how many RAM, CPU and other things. Also it will show you the BIOS process number (tells where is the error). Then simply google for the number.

Anyway the error looks like part of the Windows post-boot process is corrupted. Because he is writing that he can press F8, which is for Windows boot and for how to boot Windows.
Anyway put the HDD to another computer and do some scans. For your problem I would suggest HDD scans: corrupted partition, surface test, boot settings test, file structure. And also have a look to C:\boot.ini . There is also a probability of infection corruption, but from your text it is hard to tell.

Member Avatar for mdk2k4

Hello folks, I have a Toshiba Equium M50-244 laptop that did work but now doesn't. I press the start button and get the Toshiba press F2 for set up or F12 for boot. Then i get a blank screen! nothing boots up from there on. I can start it in safe mode by hitting F8 and when i select any option on that page it goes straight to blank screen. Any ideas please?

You are saying that when you start the toshiba laptop go pass the logo and goes to this screen automatically= press F2 for set up or F12 for boot up options and you get to a blank screen, that means the Bios is not recognizing the hard drive at all, nothing,nada, so now you are also saying that you can boot in safe mode by hitting F8 and it takes to the windows recovery boot up options and you also get to a blank screen when you chose any of the options, so it does not make sence, so which of the two you are doing. if you need help you have to let us know exactly what is the problem and explain it right so we can help you. I have 3 toshiba laptops, almost the same thing happened to me, and it was the hard drive, that's why I'm telling you that, I also fix computers for a living. Take the hard drive out, it must be a sata hard drive, get an external case ($14.00) for 2.5 sata hard drive, then plug it in another computer see if you can see the hard drive, if you do, download Hard Disk Sentinel and install it, it will give you more less the conditions of the hard drive. then depending on the outcome of the hard drive, run scandisk, and scan it for viruses too.
By the way here is a picture of one fo my toshiba laptops 12" with hard disk sentinel running.

and also hardis sentinel site
http://www.hdsentinel.com/

Edited by mdk2k4 because: n/a
Member Avatar for mdk2k4

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Edited by mdk2k4 because: n/a
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