Mr. Gone

Hello all,

I bought a Satellite M35X-S329 about a year and a half/two years ago and it has been a bittersweet experience. It is my first laptop and the first thing I noticed after I bought it was when I booted it up it had 2 dead pixels! I went back to bestbuy to return it and they said they couldn't take it back because toshiba's policy was that there had to be five contigious dead pixels before it was considered to be a faulty display. What kind of crap is that? Through a combination of stubborness and glaring I got the manager to authorize me a replacement and I took it home happy.

About 3 or 4 months later I had the power problem with the jack coming off the motherboard. Luckily this happened 3 days before the warranty expired so I got it fixed for free at a service center. Numerous calls were made to toshiba's "customer service" deptartment and it took them 4 calls to realize what my complaint was! I found out online that it was a well known issue and the guys at the service center said it had been a known issue for quite some time.

And now this. I had thought I was in the clear, everything worked fine and I really do love this laptop when it works as it should.

It freezes with no provocation. I could let it sit at the log-in screen and it will still freeze. It seems to freeze without me being anywhere near it. I am not ruling out a driver problem, but I do not know how to fix that because I am not sure what drivers I should be looking at. I may try removing the drivers as one poster mentioned earlier. I will get back to you if that works, but my serial starts with X4 so I may heed the advice of the tech guy and take it in to have the top replaced. I am really getting tired of backing up my data.

If anyone has any further suggestions about possible driver issues feel free to e-mail me

I sent a report to that class action link posted before as well. Toshiba has lost a customer for life though. As much as I love this laptop nothing is worth so much frustration. You spend 1000+ dollars on something it should damn well work for more than 2 years!

Anyone else with any other class action info let me know - petitions too. Toshiba needs to address this!

Changeling

Ok in order,

Toshiba specify 5 contigious dead pixels?? Thats impressive. Flat pannel screens are very difficult to make. I have heard if maufacturers who specify 10+ dead pixels before they will do anything about it. Some may say that two dead pixels is getting off lightly.

Next point is freezing. Does it freeze or is it just that it takes a very long time to do something?

Chances are that the laptop is fine, XP is fine but a third party application or driver is causing problems. If you are going to yell at someone make sure you yell at the right person.

Next time it freezes you need to do a few basic tests.

Does the mouse (arrow/egg timer)move?
Does the caps lock and the num lock LED's work?

If so it hasn't frozzen its just got bogged down in some process or other.

Given that it hasn't frozzen press CNTL ALT DEL to bring up task manager and check the "processes" to see which process is hogging the CPU and end that process. I do accept that the system may take ages to respond to the key presses but be patient.

Known issues here are rouge applications (spyware etc) attempting to access the internet and failing hence they stall.

Incompatible devices attached to the system although on more modern systems this is rare.

Check your Anitvirus settings. A deep virus scan on the hard drive can really slow things down.

Also check windows defender (if installed) this will slow the system down when it does its scan.

Are you an Ebay user? On my system Ebay toolbar has been known to be the culprit.

Do a spyware check. These nasty things can be badly written and prone to crashing.

Total lockups are very rare and are normally accompanied by either a blue screen error or the machine randomly restarting.

TheMatt

Use MobileMeter in my sig to watch the temps. You will start to experience problems if they go above 65 - 70 degrees.

Mr. Gone

I tested all temps and the fan housing first. It isn't overheating.

It freezes to the point where I have to hold the power button to turn it off. The mouse does not move no matter what.

It has been reset to factory settings (i.e. harddisk wiped), so spyware is probably not it.

I don't use ebay or any toolbar for that matter.

I use AVG for anti-virus which has never been resource intense from my experience.

The only option I seem to be left with is driver issues or RAM issues. It will restart randomly, though usually it freezes before it can do that.

It has been taken in to a service center to have the top cover replaced since it is a known issue with my model that causes random restarts. I was not entirely sure this was the issue, but I may as well have it done and rule that out as an option.

Anything further?

Terrister

Try this to test your memory.
http://www.memtest86.com/

JamesO

Toshiba's have a number of issues.

Heat, clogged heat sinks and fans that do not work are one specific issue.

Check this link for other things specific to your machine:

http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/t...ceghdgngdgnj.0

Seems that you have the power connector problem resolved for now, although, it could return?

Also tell us how much RAM is in the machine and how many running Process are active at full boot. Task Manager, bottom left corner.

Also try starting the machine in Safe Mode (F8 at boot) with Networking and see if it plays any better.

JamesO

Mr. Gone

Supposedly the power connector on the new motherboards have been epoxy'd to hell and back to make sure they don't have that same issue.

RAM is 512MB, I can't tell you the processes just yet because I don't have the machine yet. When I get it back I can post it here.

Safe mode seems to work fine and is largely the only reason I was able to run any diagnostics at all.

laboye

Could be memory. Get your memory tested with Memtest86. If the memory is easily accessible, and there's more than one RAM module, try using the machine with only one in. This can eliminate bad RAM.

Mr. Gone

Well the RAM is fine, or so says the tech guy at the toshiba service center. He is saying that the board is bad, so he's going to get an exception case and order me a new board...hopefully.

This will be the third board in my computer...hooray -_-

Mr. Gone

Well, the new sysboard is in and no problems whatsoever. =)

Thank you to all that offered advice, sage or otherwise.

laboye

No problem! Glad to hear your machine is up and running!

mswochris

How do I actually use the memtest for an XP machine? i've downloaded it, but my CRRecording software doesn't mention ISO image.
Thanks!

laboye

Look around for an option similar to "burn image to disc". Select the ISO file from there.