cf-28 not loading

i just recieved yesterday my cf-28. it hasn't been able to run yet. the first time booting up it froze on a desktop screen w/o icons or start menu. this happened twice before it would only go to a blank screen. it seems to run in safe mode just fine. iv'e tried the system restore, but it doesnt seem to be able to restore the settings...help!!!!!
oh its running XP pro.
thanks
mike

 

Sounds like some sort of driver problem, are you restoring with the panasonic Recovery disks?

 

no i've been trying to restore w the windows system restore, from safe mode.

 

That might be the problem, im not sure what version of windows that is you're trying to install, did you completely wipe the drive clean or are you trying to repair a copy of windows already installed? I would reccomend backing up all your files in safe mode and then doing a complete wipe and reinstalling, I still think its a driver problem

 

ok that may be what i 'll have to do. i'm not tryig to install windows XP just get it to run its a new to me machine, i'm in contact w the seller, i have confidence (surprisingly) that it'll et straightened out. thanks for your help

 

Roszko,
If the seller can't help you out we will! Welcome to the forum.
CAP

 

thanks for the welcome... i actually believe he's one of you

 

Yup.... It's me!

This is really frying my brain guys... I started and restarted this laptop a bunch while loading drivers and software. Everything worked fine. You know how many times you have to reboot while loading drivers, software and updates.... I never had a problem. Now he can only boot up under safe mode. When he tries to boot normally the Win start-up screen comes up with the little blue bar then goes to a black screen and stays there. If it was a Dell... I'd say it was dropped during shipment! But it is NOT a Dell. My first thought was that UPS stored it next to something magnetic... Or something crazy like that.

Anyway... He is shipping it back to me to fix... I'll replace the hard drive... Just to be sure and reload everything... I'm also going to add RAM to it... I didn't have any when I sold it to him.

Thank God for customers who are patient and understanding!

 

Thanks Toughbook for going at least an extra mile!! if not several! you are definatly in the minority when it comes to customer service. again thanks for standing behind your product!

 

No sweat... It just bums me you weren't able to get that big crazy smile on your face when you start it for the first time. EVERYONE gets one of those. Then you start thinking about how your Toughbook can withstand just about anything. I need to find out why this one couldn't withstand the UPS truck!

I'll get it going and back to you lickety split!

Thanks again...

By the way... If you guys have any opinions... I'm open to hearing them. Bad driver somewhere? Scrambled hard drive somehow? A physical change in the universe?

 

When you get it, check the RAM. It sounds very similar to problems I used to have with PC's that had either bad RAM or bad CMOS battery. Worth looking into.

 

TB - did you use one of the HTS 7,200 ? I had one that just acted plain stupid after about 2 days - Otherwise only trouble I have had that was even close was a bad ram stick. You might just have a bum HD, you will know soon enough though I guess - good luck

 

It might be as simple as re-seating the connector on the hard drive caddy. Every now and then we ran across it at work where it would spontaneously "die" and all it took was to remove the hard drive caddy and reinstall. Presto, it was working fine like nothing happened.

They were all installed in vehicle mounts (heavy duty utility crew trucks that often went off road) and our theory was that they would simply vibrate loose over time. The same thing could happen in shipping. Not to impugn the good name of the fine folks at any of the major shipping companies, but I worked with a couple of people who joked about playing "football" with the Gateway cow pattern boxes whenever they saw them in their former job.

 

Had the same problem with mine. After I reseated the hard drive and the optical drive it fired right up and ran fine. Strange but true.

 

Hmmmm... I guess I will try that first...

The drive came out of a fairly new CF-29... It passed all the tests with flying colors. I thought about the hard drive but thought that if it booted into safe mode and ran fine that way... It probably wasn't the culprit.

I'll check when I get it back...

 

Well... It wasn't the hard drive and it wasn't the connection and it wasn't the RAM as there was only the soldered base RAM to start with... It ended up being <drum roll please> The Motherboard! SOMETHING was bad on the motherboard. I could not get any drive to work with the other laptop. So I pulled out another CF-28 and built that one instead and moved the monitor, GPS, wifi, etc. over to the new one. With the newer 120GB drive and an added stick of 256 RAM... It's much speedier than it was to start with. So when I have the time one day I'll try to figure out what it actually was on the mobo of the other one that failed. Either that or it will go into my "As-Is" sale that I am going to have on ebay for a bunch of old CF-28 carcasses and parts.