Toshiba BIOS

Yeppers that is what I am talking about. I can access that as well as the BOOT menu.

Ok,
just had a moment to get everything in this thread down and in 1 place. I'll read over my notes and see if I can add something useful for you

Ok,
Things we know:

1. You have established the replacement HDD to be in working order.
2. You have established the notebook won't recognize a known good HDD
3. You have reset the RTC
4. Is the battery still out and notebook running on AC only? Stated you tried it, but not sure if it still is like this.
5. Get to the BIOS?? From the posts and the questions other members have asked, I am not 100% you have entered the BIOS.
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/bios_manufacturer.htm

In the BIOS you can:
a. Determine if the system sees the HDD...which we haven't had an affirmative on.
b. set your boot order as well as check the other BIOS settings to ensure nothing is preventing the system from seeing the HDD

So,
How do you enter your systems BIOS?

What BIOS version do you have? Have you flashed them? Are you familiar with flashing BIOS?

What utilities did you try with the UBCD? There are a ton of programs on that disk, and from your reply, I'm wondering which utilities you ran and why? Did you use Basic or Full?

See if you can determine if any part of the system is bad from either the burn in programs or if you can access the drives while you have this running.

You have stated you have not partitioned the HDD because you rely on the Windows XP CD to handle this for you. You may have found a system that requires the drive to fdisked prior to running the CD. In this case, you'll need to do this ideally in the notebook, but possibly externally by using a Notebook drive converter that either allows you to make it a USB drive or connect to an IDE cable. Both these will be done outside the notebook.

I didn't notice a response regarding the Jumpers on the New HDD. Is the jumper, slave, CS or master? Make sure it matches the setting of your older drive (CS or Master to CS or Master).

Do you have a drive adapter that needs to be attached to the notebook drive prior to installing into chassis? I've see where people will slide their new drive in and fail to install the cage or gender changer and bring the notebook to the shop for us to 'fix'.

******

If all the above fails to pan out.....Then I might suspect the following...
the mobo may be bad and need replacing. I've previously posted a couple very reliable links, so check there first.

HOWEVER,
I guess before I write the system off, how is it the drive 'failed'? You mentioned it is your nephews notebook. You stated the notebook hadn't been dropped, etc... Is it possibly your nephew was attempting to 'repair' the notebook prior to bringing it to you?

How was the drive noticed to be failing? Just stopped booting? Overheated? Errors? etc...

*****

I guess I'd like to know if you can infact
1. fdisk the drive.
2. see the partitioned drive in BIOS
3. Which utilities you have run from UBCD
4. install the OS this partitioned drive
5. Check the Toshiba forum/other forums for similar Toshiba problem. I think you may see (as JD mentioned) others have run into similar problems.

Good Luck!
It can be frustrating, but very fun once you get it

RussS

jescab wrote:

Yeppers that is what I am talking about. I can access that as well as the BOOT menu.

OK - so does what is there for the drive match the new one? I have on more than one occasion found a Tosh laptop to had the hard drive settings manually configured - a right royal pain in the proverbial.

It says internal hard drive = none...........that is telling me it was not recognized

The laptop does not have any visible signs of being dropped or abused.
He brought it to me because the drives was making all kinds of noise and would stop spinning. To me the hdd is shot. So I ordered a new replacement (exact same make and model as the old one). I installed it and it was not detected by the BIOS. I did some fooling around with the new hdd in but nothing worked. I installed the new hdd in another laptop and it was detected and formatted (actually I installed XP). So that tells me the new hdd is good. I remove the RTC for roughly 30-45 mins and tried the new hdd with the RTC out then I re-installed the RTC and tried the new hdd but it did not get picked up in the BIOS. I then installed the new hdd that was formatted and had XP installed on it into the broke laptop and BIOS did not detect it. I took a working hdd out of a working laptop and installed it into the broke laptop and the BIOS did not detect the 3rd (working) hdd.

on the UBCD I tried the drive utilities and one other one.

The boot order is set to boot from teh cd-rom, hdd, LAN

hey Russ - what do you mean by manually configured. The old hdd did not have any jumpers or anything on it.

jescab wrote:

hey Russ - what do you mean by manually configured. The old hdd did not have any jumpers or anything on it.

In the bios you should be able to select and configure the drive (aka = set it up).

Which bios is running on Toshiba?

*****

on the UBCD I tried the drive utilities and one other one.

So you did not try any of the system tests? You may try those as it should run through and test your hardware. We know the drive is good. We need to find out if the hardware is good OR if it is just a matter of some settings that you need to configure to 'tell' the system where to find your HDD.

I will check the version of BIOS when I get home.

There was nothing in there to configure a drive (set it up).

I did try some system tests and everything came back fine.

I don't recall you directly answering this question:
Have you selected to reset the bios to defaults? Not all BIOS settings have this option, but many do. Often another BIOS reset option is OPTIMAL. Sometimes killing the CMOS is not enough, and a lot of times you can't get to the CMOS backup battery anyway on a laptop.

jescab wrote:

I will check the version of BIOS when I get home.

There was nothing in there to configure a drive (set it up).

I did try some system tests and everything came back fine.

I'm not looking for the # so much as Award/Phoenix/etc..

Knowing this will us walk you through where things are located and if it is even an option for you.

How do you enter your bios? Which keys do you hit to get in?

RussS, JD, myself and some others have asked what tend to be typical questions. Some of the replies just make me wonder if any one of us has made any headway.

I went through and re-asked questions from myself and others and I don't think they've been answered.

1. What are the jumper settings on that drive? There should be a place to select S/CS/M how is it set?
2. Do you know how to or are you able to FDISK this drive?
3. Have you researched the Toshiba forum for similar problems?
4. Was there an adapter/cage that the HDD plugs into in addtion to installing it in the notebook?

If your board cannot see the Drive, not much else is going to matter.
To confirm the board is good, you'll need to be in teh bios and/or run system diagnositics to confirm/deny the board works.
You will likely need to set things up manually in the bios, but there should be a set defaults....which will set back to Toshiba's original settings. Has this been tried?

Some of the replies to BIOS questions has me wondering if you have really entered the BIOS screen? Without trying to be rude about it, I've merely asked what method you have entered bios by??? And there hasn't been a reply.

In my big long post I even included a link so that you could review some of the Toshiba options for entereing BIOS...they vary from model to model.

There seems to be a number of us wanting to see you be successful with this, though at this point, just about all the advice has already been handed out and without absolute confirmation on some of the replies, I'm just not sure what else to tell you (speaking for myself only).

-The Drive must be partitioned to have an OS installed, period.
-The BIOS needs to recognize the drive before you will even get to install anything on it.
-All the connections need to be secure.
-Remove the battery when working on the laptop, using only the AC.

The BIOS needs to recognize the drive before we can proceed which I believe RussS has stated a couple times.

sprkymrk

Hi Plantwiz: I think he did answer 1 of your questions regarding the jumpers on the drive -

jescab wrote:

The new drive is jumpered the same way the old hdd was jumpered. No jumpers at all and it is the exact same make/model hdd.

and

jescab wrote:

hey Russ - what do you mean by manually configured. The old hdd did not have any jumpers or anything on it.

Otherwise, I am with you on waiting for the other answers, though I suspect the MB got messed up while drive swapping, maybe ESD or maybe it was in power save mode with the battery still in and he thought it was powered off.

BTW - Very nice work summarizing all that stuff. That's organized trouble shooting if I ever saw it.

He said he did get into the BIOS, as he made it clear to differentiate that from the boot device menu that many BIOSes now have.

He did indicate that the bios shows NONE for HD report.

All IDE drives have a jumper for master/slave selection, but he did indicate it is the same model drive, and neither the original nor the replacement had jumpers visible.

I just thought of something, since it was mentioned about a drive cage. Be sure you are inserting the drive correctly where all pins go into the socket. It is often easy to skew the rows so that only one row is connected to the socket. If you didn't install the drive onto the sled, that can be easy to do.

OK, I will double check and make sure the drive is in the cage correctly. If I installed it backwards that would be too funny.

The BIOS is ACPI Version 1.20

sprkymrk wrote:

Hi Plantwiz: I think he did answer 1 of your questions regarding the jumpers on the drive -

jescab wrote:

The new drive is jumpered the same way the old hdd was jumpered. No jumpers at all and it is the exact same make/model hdd.

and

jescab wrote:

hey Russ - what do you mean by manually configured. The old hdd did not have any jumpers or anything on it.

Otherwise, I am with you on waiting for the other answers, though I suspect the MB got messed up while drive swapping, maybe ESD or maybe it was in power save mode with the battery still in and he thought it was powered off.

BTW - Very nice work summarizing all that stuff. That's organized trouble shooting if I ever saw it.

You are absolutely correct! My apologies. I thought I had it all jotted down and I obviously overlooked it. My notes were getting about as long as the thread

.

Danman32:

He did indicate that the bios shows NONE for HD report.

Yes, I did notice this, but since he cannot seem to make changes to the settings, I do have a suspesion he didn't enter the bios, but maybe only saw the POST listing.

JESCAB:

The BIOS is ACPI Version 1.20

??
http://kb.iu.edu/data/ahvl.html

I'm not familiar with ACPI being a 'bios' type. Really???

Yes, it says ACPI - I was confussed also when I saw it. I will double check it when I get home, just to make sure.

when it starts to boot and i see the toshiba logo i hit esc......then it says hit F1 and i do........

jescab wrote:

Yes, it says ACPI - I was confussed also when I saw it. I will double check it when I get home, just to make sure.

when it starts to boot and i see the toshiba logo i hit esc......then it says hit F1 and i do........

Thanks.

ACPI is something between Intel, MS and Toshiba so I wasn't certain if it was on ALL or some or just maybe sat ontop of AWARD or something.

I'll see if I can find some menu regarding this...

ACPI is the power manager version, not the BIOS version.

http://askiris.toshiba.com/ToshibaSupportSite/dynamickc.do?externalId=544709xml&sliceId=&command=show&forward=nonthreadedKC&kcId=544709xml

jescab wrote:

OK, I will double check and make sure the drive is in the cage correctly. If I installed it backwards that would be too funny.

Funny, but not uncommon. Often the socket is not keyed as the drive pins are. Without the key, it can be hard to tell which direction to orient the drive.

Also be sure none of the pins got bent trying to install the drive.

Should look somthing like this:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/09/22/bios_for_beginners/

@&BV_EngineID=ccciaddikifdmdecgfkceghdgngdgnn.0

from the online manual.........

Bios
• TSETUP, APM, ACPI, PnP, VESA, DPMS, DDC, SM BIOS, PC BIOS support

Here is the link

http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/tais/su/su_sc_outFrm.jsp?moid=411405&ct=DS&soid=638260&BV_SessionID= @.gif

@0335944489.1157743515 @.gif

Going to Downloads from the link, looks like you could upgrade the firmware to version 1.30. I Haven't heard of a make of bios as ACPI, but it does seem that way, or else Toshiba OEMs and labels it as their own, with ACPI support so they call it that.

In technical article http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/tais/su/su_sc_dtlView.jsp?soid=355107&moid=411405&BV_SessionID= @.gif

@0445868920.1157744984 @.gif

@&BV_EngineID=cccfaddikdkdemkcgfkceghdgngdgnj.0&ct=SB

it shows to press the [home] key to reset the bios once you're in the bios setup. Then of course save the BIOS settings.

The diagnosis I got from an independent tech shop is that the Motherboard is fried.

Plantwiz wrote:

http://www.sparepartswarehouse.com/

OR

http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/agrp.to?coid=-26364&ccid=1291043&rcid=-26364&seg=HHO&src=BUEM&cm_mmc=google_SEM-_-brand-_-access-_-toshiba_laptop_part

Both have been decent to work with in the past if you plan on changing it out yourself.

Sorry to hear it's a definate loss

I am debating whether or not it is worth replacing or should I just get a new one. I will probably just get a new one.

jescab wrote:

I am debating whether or not it is worth replacing or should I just get a new one. I will probably just get a new one.

Well, replacing it can be done for a few hundred. Gained experience. No gaurantee your problem ends there.

A coupld hundred more then a new board...New warranty. Slightly better system.

Yep, toss up

If it was me to a client....I'd recommend a new laptop. If it was mine, I'd probably replace the board. Because if something else goes....I can fix it. If it's my clients, he's paying me each time I touch it and after a couple hours he could have just gotten himself a new - fully working -full warranty notebook and just pay me to set it up.

FWIW