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    Satellite M55-S3512, no boot, 4-1-1 beep code.

    Discussion in 'Toshiba' started by scorp508, Oct 20, 2007.

  1. scorp508

    scorp508 Newbie

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    Hi,

    A friend of mine dropped her Satellite M55-S3512 and the machine will no longer boot. Upon pressing the power button the fans spin up and then quickly a 4-1-1 beep code is given, at which point nothing else happens. The LCD never lights up and an external monitor never receives a signal.

    She brought it to Geeksquad (why I have NO clue!) and they at first told her the LCD was broken. Then she got an external enclosure for the HDD and couldn't access her files. Another trip back to Geeksquad and they quoted her $1,499.00 to do a data recovery. At this point she finally called me (I do this kind of stuff for a living, not sure why she didn't start here but whatever...). I popped the HDD into the enclosure she bought, plugged it into an XP machine and immediately saw the drive. Nothing is wrong with the drive at all, I just had to fix take NTFS ownership and add a permission since a different XP machine was trying to access the files. Seriously.... Geeksquad should be shot for this.

    So ok long story short, now that I have her files safe I was going to try and figure out why it won't boot. I disassembled the LCD and popped the keyboard off. I reseated all of the connections, cleaned it out some (crumbs), and put everything back together. Still nothing, just the beep code.

    Is this evidence of her possible breaking the motherboard or another component? I've been trying to find a list of Toshiba beep codes, but have not yet come across one.... just some sort of similar threads here.

    Thanks for any advice. :)

    p.s.

    I just realized I didn't try reseating the memory yet, will now....
     
  2. andyasselin

    andyasselin Notebook Deity

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    Try reseting the ram other that not much you can try
     
  3. scorp508

    scorp508 Newbie

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    Reseated the memory, no change. Even tried powering it on without the memory installed to see if the beep code would change, still the same 4-1-1. The harddrive spins up too in case that somehow has any effect on possibilities.

    I may as well strip this thing down to the bone and look for any broken wires, solders, burns etc...
     
  4. scorp508

    scorp508 Newbie

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    Fixed! I stripped it down and found the touchpad cable was unplugged. I don't know if this was it or not, but upon buttoning everything back up she's booting up great! I also swapped the RAM under the motherboard into the other slot for the hell of it. Both SODIMMS are in there now though, so memory seems to check out ok.