Is my Laptop done.

[BIGSTIC]

So yeah once again my laptop is giving me grief. Note to self dont buy toshiba laptops. After the year warenty ran out it started overheating all the time and now it is giving me this pretty blue screen.

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b1...c/DSC01231.jpg

This is a 3.5 year old machine running a pentium4 and if you google it you will see post upon post about the over heating issue. Through clever desing i created a cooling system so i could still use it but last night it started giving me the above screen. I enter in safe mode and pretty blue screen. I am at my wits end and am about to throw it out the window. I really dont want to spend $$$ fixing it since the $400 walmart special is better than this thing. However if it is as simple as taking the 8 hours to dump everything and reload everything from scratch i am willing to go that route since it still does everything i need it too.

Please BG you have been my saviour before, give it to me straight. $400 walmart special or keep trying to make this toshiba paper weight work? I dont want to waste a day reloading everything if it is just fucked to begin with.

Thanks

[Amele]

you had a crash on an interrupt probably.

have you followed the instructions on the pretty blue screen yet? when it started overheating regularly you should've bitten the bullet to get the fans checked out - not doing preventative maintenance may have wrecked the PC.

[BIGSTIC]

I was watching "Transformers" when this happened. And yeah when it happened i rebooted in safe mode and check the drivers and during this process it gave me the blue screen again. Rebooted again and went to check disk space and saw that i am at like 40% capacity and bam blue screen again. It will let me use it for about 2-5 min before blue screen.

So yeah kinda frustrating.

As for the overheating issues it has nothing to do with the fans. It has been to 3 Toshiba service guys and all they do is take it apart say everything checks out and that yeah its a Toshiba and better luck next time.

http://www.notebookreview.com/price/def ... nionDetail

Read the reviews on this laptop. It sucks. Toshiba knows it and even extended the warentys but all that did was give me an excuse to send it off to the service techs so they could send it back just to have it work for a week then FAIL again. Like i said the overheating I can deal with buy getting ALOT of airflow through it with my nifty little Fan-table i made for it.

[Killgannon]

does it come up long enough for you to check the event log? so you can possibly see wtf happened when it decided to BSOD? and you're talking about reformat/reinstall anyway, so why not try that? you are just out a couple hours of time, and if it still happens you know you're fucked... (or if you cant even reinstall...)

[The Stig]

I think you should buy a new laptop.

Also, in my experience with fans and what not, no matter how much cooling you got outside the laptop (EDIT: Unless you're in some extremely cold room), it will never cool off a laptop as good as the fans inside. You said it wasn't a fan problem however, but Pentium 4s get pretty hot even with just playing a DVD. Especially if it's a desktop one, not too sure which one you got.

Regardless, external cooling like your fan table is good for "light" activity (webpage browsing/word processing) but I have found it to be inadequate once you get the laptop going.

Still, get a new laptop, but I wouldn't try to ignore the parts for the price. What do you mainly do with your laptop? If your laptop has been fine and is just throwing up a BSOD all of a sudden, it's possible it's hardware, but try to download a benchmark app to push your laptop, see if it BSODs it then. It does seem random/weird that it came up all of a sudden. Did you try to let your laptop off for 20 odd minutes then turn it back on, to see if you get more than 5 mins use out of it?

[Shuemue]

Might be worth running either http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ or something like Quicktech to check the hardware.

Looking at a bunch of the results on google, 0x0000008E BSOD are often caused by a faulty stick of RAM. If you're able to access them, try running the machine with 1 removed, then switch that out to test the other. (assuming they've given you a matched pair)

[BIGSTIC]

To answer a few questions......

I used to play FFXI on this laptop until just recently due to living situations(moved to a house out where you can only get dial up) the wife and i chose to take a break from FFXI. Now the laptop is mainly used for watching movies while i travel on the road. The overheating was found to be due to Toshibas lack of designing a quality product and pretty much they admitted it in there lawsuite. However all you got out of it was toshiba giving temporary fixes. My fan-table was actually a normal box fan i turned on side and put the laptop ontop, blowing the heat away from the laptop. Amazingly it worked quit well and the laptop quit shutting itself down.

Now while i was out at dinner I met a man who seemed to think he knew a thing or two about computers and I told him my problem. He offered to come back to my room to help but uhhh yeah i dont think so He said he had a client who got that screen cause she had a corrupt RAM stick and I remebered i have a stick in my laptop so what the hell I will take it out and see if it works. So yes atm i am posting from my laptop with only 448mb of ram that came with the laptop and crying about how slow it is. And after seeing that they want $150 for another stick i am just a little sicker. LAptop has been running for 15min now and no blue screen so I am gonna toss "Transformers" back in and ponder weather to spend $150 on ram and keep dealing with an overheating laptop or just go buy the walmart special.

edit: Shuemee got it it seems...if you had posted like 2 hours ago you could have saved me from talking to the creepy guy at the bar

[Shuemue]

If spending $150 is what it takes to fix a 3.5 year old machine, that's pretty close to the mark where I'd seriously consider upgrading to a newer laptop if I had the cash available. I'd leave the old one as a spare for emergencies with just one stick of ram in there. It'd suffice for email/surfing/office etc.

[Khamsin]

If spending $150 is what it takes to fix a 3.5 year old machine, that's pretty close to the mark where I'd seriously consider upgrading to a newer laptop if I had the cash available. I'd leave the old one as a spare for emergencies with just one stick of ram in there. It'd suffice for email/surfing/office etc.

My laptop is about that old, and is currently in the shop for repair of a fan that quit working. The labor fees are $80 per hour (they estimated under 2 hours) plus whatever the new fan costs. It's likely going to cost me $250-$300 all told. This is at a local laptop repair shop. If I had gone to a major retail repair service, like Best Buy's Geek Squad, it'd be even more.

But then, the laptop also cost $2000 (plus warranty and taxes, etc.) so I consider it a good investment. If I had wanted to, I could have recovered the data on it and transferred it to a new laptop since I can run it for about 5-10 minutes at a time before it shuts itself off (no blue screen). Prior to taking it in to get repaired, I'd run it for about 5 minutes while being aware of the temperature, then put it in hibernate mode to cool off. It didn't allow me to do much, but it let me safely check email or read BG for a few minutes each session.

But I don't need a new laptop, my current one is still fine except for the fan.

[BIGSTIC]

Well thanks for the input.

Got through "Transformers" just fine and seems to be working. Got home and discussed it with the wife and decided to just wait and see. It still overheats and shuts off unless you prop it up so it can move alot of air but atm it seems a waist to buy the ell cheapo laptops. We decided to re-evaluate if/when we get broadband again. We spent $1800 on this laptop 3.5 years ago and well it just doesnt seem worth it right now. We can deal with the slow load times and the overheating a little longer.

[The Stig]

Well thanks for the input.

Got through "Transformers" just fine and seems to be working. Got home and discussed it with the wife and decided to just wait and see. It still overheats and shuts off unless you prop it up so it can move alot of air but atm it seems a waist to buy the ell cheapo laptops. We decided to re-evaluate if/when we get broadband again. We spent $1800 on this laptop 3.5 years ago and well it just doesnt seem worth it right now. We can deal with the slow load times and the overheating a little longer.

Fair enough, but I know how you feel. I remember spending £1300 back in 1998 (that's about $2800, give or take) on a desktop PC with a AMD 366mhz processor which was, awesome at the time, but when it came to get a new PC we felt funny about it.

But fact is it will only get cheaper and cheaper. You can wait, but there is no "best" time to buy, the moment you buy something new will come out or the prices will once again drop. Your call really, all the best. :D

[Vyvian]

You should be able to beat that price for another stick of RAM on newegg, even on a notebook.

For a 512 chip on newegg, the cost varies between $25 and $80, the more expensive ones being notebook PC-133, which I'm pretty sure you don't have on a pentium 4.

If you can figure out how to identify your ram type, that's probably the cheapest route to get that chip replaced.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...111&name=512MB

[mootsfox]

I'll give you $25-75 dollars for it depending on the specs.

[BIGSTIC]

I'll give you $25-75 dollars for it depending on the specs.

gonna have to pass. this old laptop is now delegated to sitting in the closet until we go on vacations. she still works fine for basic internet and playing movies. Plus my boss just got me a new laptop for work and I spent last weekend wiring a guys shop and instead of paying me cash he gave me this.....

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp ... 5599475702

he baught it the day before for his sons graduation present but that friday night his son got a mip/dui and the cash he was gonna give me ended up going to bail out his son. his bill was $800 but he gave me the whole pakage he baught including a 24" gateway 1080p lcd monitor with pip and a cannon 3-1 printer and thanked me for getting to him so fast lol. I am in love with my 24" lcd and wish they would get cable out to my house so the wife and I could start playing again lol for half priced computers (even if they are gateway )

[mootsfox]

I see it comes with a Phenom... I'm sorry.

At least you got the 24" gateway which is a very nice monitor.

[BIGSTIC]

I see it comes with a Phenom... I'm sorry.

At least you got the 24" gateway which is a very nice monitor.

Yeah wasnt too stoked about the AMD but then I remebered I am a wanabee and honestly would really never have any use for an EXTREME computer. Plus I have an AMD 3500+ in my wifes desktop and it never blinked running any game we have played(we play FPS on consoles ) so figured might as well take it. lol

edit: every monitor should come with PiP. Nothing like being able to do stuff on your computer while watching TV on the same screen. No more having to listen to the games on the radio while doing work