Laptop problem

[Ernesto Alvarez 818262]

seeing as theres lots of technical folks around. figured id try and post this issue.

 

i have a Toshiba Satellite M45-S265 laptop that i was using to run FS and VRC. bout 5 years old already, my cousin used to use it for school then gave it to me.

 

about a month or 2 ago it just died. i thought maybe its the power adapter that maybe isnt working right, i lost the factory adaptor earlier this year and bought an aftermarket one, but its got its days that it just wont charge the laptop.

 

anyway i was on VRC controlling about a month or 2 ago and outta nowhere it just shuts off on me. im thinking ok maybe i didnt notice that the charger had disconnected and the battery died. but after weeks of tryin to play around with the charger and plugging it in etc.. it still doesnt power up. ive tried removing the battery and leaving just the charger to see if maybe the batter is the cause. still nothing.

 

not even the charge light or power light on the laptop come on.

 

any ideas? ive tried looking through some of the toshiba forums. and seems like some people reported similar situations as a motherboard failure. im really hoping its not this.

 

if by any chance it is the motherboard, any way to recover the data on the laptop using a pc?

[Garry Morris 920567]

As long as the drive isn't fried, you can open up the laptop, carefully remove the hard drive, and put it into a laptop hard drive cage.

 

Go to your local computer supply store (not BestBuy, a real computer supply store) and tell them you have a laptop hard drive that you need to get data off of and that you want an empty laptop hard drive cage. They should give you a little plastic box with a couple of USB cables sticking out of it. The price should be $20-$40 or so. Make sure you specify that you want an empty one, and not one with a drive already in it (one with a drive already in it should cost you more than $40).

 

Open up the little case, install hard drive, plug both USB cables into your desktop PC and the drive should show up as an external USB hard drive under "My Computer".

 

Drag off the files you want and presto.

[Ernesto Alvarez 818262]

awesome, thanks gary!!! life saver!

 

i avoid best buy for pc support, last time they quoted me about $1000 to fix another issue, i fixed it myself for $5

 

theres tigerdirect near me, will have to go there. thanks again!

[Garry Morris 920567]

Oops, forgot about the advent of SATA.

 

First, take out your hard drive. Look at the connection for it - if its a little tiny USB sized opening, it's SATA. If it's about 2-3 inches wide and has a bunch of obvious metal pins, it's E-IDE.

 

When you go to get the cage, you'll want to get the proper interface for the drive.

 

For IDE: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3169580&CatId=2782

 

For SATA: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3481278&CatId=2783

[Jon Coffing 1042532]

You can do it all yourself with this:

 

 

You can connect it to a laptop HD, or a standard drive.

 

 

 

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1871517&CatId=3770

 

 

 

Jon