Is the X305 9700m faulty?

I recently bought my wife a Qosmio x305 for Christmas and it has been nothing but trouble since we got it. The issue is that every now and then the screen will go black and not respond unless a hard reboot is done. It happens while playing games (not to graphically intense), and while just surfing the net.

I have tried 4-5 different drivers hoping that would solve the issue. I have tried 2 toshiba ones, 2 nvidia ones and the dox drivers but nothing seems to work. I opened it up and replaced all the old paste with MX3 and there is a cooling fan under the laptop so the issues is not overheating as it barely gets over 70 degrees celcius during gaming.

I am thinking the video card is dying or maybe the motherboard, but it is getting so bad my wife wants to go back to her old dell. If anyone has came across this or knows what might be the issues I appreciate it.

 

The 9700M shouldn't be faulty, NVIDIA fixed that after the whole 8 series fiasco.

Measure the temperatures with a utility called HWMonitor, if you can try to get both load temperatures and idle temperatures.

There was a person who had a similar problem with a Satellite A300, and his temps were fine. It turned out to be the motherboard...

 

I use speedfan for the most part to monitor the temps. I will try giving toshiba support a call tuesday to see if there is anything they can do. The laptop is barely over a year old.

 

Does it only happen when you move the notebook?

Also can you run memtest86?

 

there is no movement involved when it black screens it is stationary on a table with a laptop cooler under it.

I will try to run memtest on it, but the memory is the original memory that it came with.

 

I have the x305 and about 7 months into having the machine it started to just black screen on me, first while watching streaming videos online then while playing video games or just surfing the net. I've had nvidia system monitor installed even before the problem started to happen so I don't think it had anything to do with over heating and I also had a laptop cooler running since I've got the notebook.

Anyway I thought it was a virus and so I made a thread on this site about the problem so I could get help but even when I formated back to factory settings it still kept on black screening sometimes with an audio loop and the only way to get the computer back online was to hard boot.

So I believe it was sometime in November or December of 2009 I took advantage of the 1 year warranty before it expired and gave Toshiba a call. They took note of the description of my problem and found a repair shop down here where I live and forwarded me to the place. I dropped the X305 of and the shop did diagnostics I suggested to them that I thought it was a virus or the video card. Anyway about 3 weeks passed and they tried to recreated the black screen but couldn't so they just swapped out the motherboard and put in a new 9700m gts vid card.

So it was fine until I believe last week was the first time again after the repair that it black screened on me while playing Cod4. I was upset so I googled X305 black screen and this seems to be a common problem with many owners of the x305 series not just the q701. So I believe it's a defect in this model series and I'm hoping many more of us make it an issue for Toshiba so they can do a recall and we can get a notebook that is not defective.

I hope more of the X305 owners that run into this prob speak up so we have a voice and case.

 

What are the sort of temperatures you are getting?

 

Right now it is about 40 degrees idling and it ramps up to around 70 while playing games.

 

*Update*

Called the Toshiba Customer support center today and explained my situation. The first lady said there was nothing she could do and if I wanted to pay for them to repair it I would have to send it to them. I kindly asked to be transferred to the customer relations department and after 20 minutes on hold I finally got to talk to someone about the issue. After 10 minutes of them researching the issue the authorized a one time repair for the laptop. I now have to go through the process of sending the laptop to the states so it can be shipped to their repair facilities in Kentucky. Hopefully it will not take long to repair the laptop...but we shall find out.

 

mines started acting up again just 3 months after the repair shop supposedly changing out the motherboard and video card. This definitley is a defect in the X305. Here's a link to Toshiba's own forum on this problem.

http://laptopforums.toshiba.com/t5/...9;jsessionid=19A4E9495FED200BD280C94D257E5AA9

and this is exactly what the problem is like on mines before the supposedly done repairs and after.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQedv_I7igE


I'm wondering how we x305 owners can go about getting a recall on this and get a refund or a product that isn't defective. Please Toshiba X305 owners make your voices heard hear and let's unite because I for one now feel very cheated.

 

i have an x300 (the same as x305) and have had some problems with a black screen, but different.

After installing windows 7 on the machine, i attempt to use the HDMI output and it would never work. i would get a black screen and would have to do a full reboot.

i wanted blurays to play on my new TV from my pc via HDMI, so i reinstalled windows vista. the problem has finally gone away... i think it is a glitch with the hdmi and w7.

So are any of you using windows 7? anyone attempting to use the HDMI port? If not, i think it has to be linked to the HDMI port somehow.

 

Sorry to resurrect an old thread but it's the closest info I could find.
I have the x305 q701 and when it first boots cold the LCD never turns on, it will boot straight into windows because it plays the welcome sound.
I have updated the video drivers, bios, reinstalled the chipset drivers, still same thing. After a hard reboot or when it's still warm it starts up fine.
Thanks for any insight

 

do you have a warranty?

 

I too have been having this problem, since January or so (the 13th month, no more warranty). I don't trust Toshiba to fix this, based off of other anecdotal evidence suggesting replaced parts do nothing to fix this issue.

I put new thermal paste on the CPU and GPU, and no noticeable difference. I also cleaned the inside of the case thoroughly when I had it apart.

It happens in Windows 7 and Vista. I'm mostly convinced it has something to do with heat, as a cooling fan underneath (and ice packs to cool the incoming air) seem to help.

I've got some Arctic Silver paste coming in the mail (much better than that crap I bought at Best Buy) so if this better paste doesn't fix this issue, I'm selling the laptop.