Toshiba A75-2112 woes. Please help!

Okay, I helped my girlfriend get a laptop a few months ago. I used to sell them, and I build my machines from the ground up so I'm pretty knowledgeable when it comes to computers.

However, this A75-2112 is driving us nuts. It's driving her nuts because the quirks it's been displaying are annoying, and it's driving ME nuts because I'm being blamed for the irregularities.

Here are the problems:

1) My girlfriend got annoyed that Hibernate mode would come on while she was sleeping or at work and kill her connection to the net. She likes to be on constantly so people can leave her messages even when she is away. So we went into the Toshiba console (after finding the power managment in XP was non-responsive and redirected us to the Toshiba console), opened the Power management section of the console and unchecked the Hibernate option. Simple enough, right?

Wrong.

Hibernate still activates, and whats more it does it randomly. Not while she's using it, but after a varying ammount of time of non-use. Anywhere from 45 minutes to 4 hours. Nothing we do seems to matter.


2) Toshiba has this "feature" where the corners of the touchpad are "buttons" that lead to shortcut menus. This feature was disabled when her dad installed Kinsington Mouse Works onto the system so she could use a travel wireless mouse. However, the software for the mouse made it so that if you came back from standby or hibernate, the touchpad wouldn't respond anymore. It worked fine until then.

Uninstalling Mouse Works fixed that problem, only the corner "buttons" came back. Not only did they come back, they went nuts. They are super sensitive. You almost can't use the touchpad without them being activated. We found a section under Toshiba's touchpad controls that allowed us to "minimize" the effective area of the buttons (to no effect) but no option to simply turn that feature off. All of the other features involving the touchpad can be deactivated, but not the corner buttons...

3) Now her speakers are muted. We rented some DVD's, and when I tried one out on her laptop, the sound was muted. There were big green letters on her screen that said "MUTED". So, I found the function keys on the keyboard to unmute the speakers and voila we had sound. The next day, my girlfriend asked me why her computer didn't have sound. I told her to check that the volume was all the way up on the dial, thent o use the function keys to unmute, and finally to go into the sound settings and make sure nothing was muted and everything had the volume all the way up. Everything is setup right, but nothing works.

And once again, I'm being blamed for the computer not working. Bieng blamed for this when I've done everything right so far is starting to get to me. I mean hell, none of what I've done has been hardcore user level stuff, this has been entry level settings changes. I'd appreciate any help you guys can give me.


Thanks.

 

Hmm...sounds like your problem may be software related. I know what you're talking about when you activate the "shortcuts" on the mouse pad (I have a Toshiba myself), but they shouldn't be overly sensive. Try going into the mouse options in the Control Panel, and toying with different settings. About the speakers; I have no idea why they shouldn't be functioning, but they could be unresponive because of a faulty BIOS. Try flashing (updating) the BIOS by going into the "Software Upgrades" program that came with the notebook. If that doesn't help, call Toshiba Tech Support and consult them. And if it comes down to it, you can always try restoring the laptop with the recovery disks.

Hope this helps,

AI

 

xAMD is correct, this does seem to be a software problem, probably more relating to the actual OS load from Toshiba.

1. The Hibernation option may kick in because of additional Toshiba Power Management software. It may use it's own features rather than Windows' features, therefore disabling it in Windows may not apply to Toshiba's s/w.

2. Installing the mouse software most likely conflicted with the Touchpad drivers and it's causing havoc with the settings. Un-installing the Mouse Works probably is still leaving settings that weren't removed.

3. The speakers, well, that seems a bit weird. It could be corrupt drivers or even a hardware problem as the A70 series has been known to be a bit iffy.

What I'd recommend doing to try to fix the problems:

1. Back up the data/drive (ghost image)
2. Download all the lastest drivers needed for your system (won't have network access until you load the drivers)
3. Install a new XP OS from scratch (manual OS load from bootable XP CD, not Toshiba Restore CD).
4. Install only hardware drivers, no need to install glidepad drivers at this point since Windows supports the glidepad as a basic mouse device (good for testing). Also, don't install any additional software at this point as you need to make sure the hardware itself works fine.
5. Test features to make sure it's working properly
6. Once all the basics are done and you know everything is working fine, make another image of the HDD so you have your own base image to work with (if anything later happens) you can now start to install the software one at a time. This will help localize what s/w is causing the problem (or at least the software combo)
7. Once everything is back up 100%, make 1 final backup and burn to DVD/CD and make bootable. This will be your friends new restore disc, if anything goes wrong, just reload using the 100% working image. If something doesn't work after this, you know it's hardware rather than software.

-Vb-

 

Yeah, I was afraid of that. Doing a complete OS overhaul and imaging was what occured to me as well. However, her parents already think that I'm causing the problems and that we should have left all the default settings the way they came. I'm not sure they are going to be too happy with me doing a complete reinstall. I'm certain that the girlfriend isn't going to be happy with that option either.

I had come to the same conclusion about the mouse software, it's just convincing these people to let me do what is necessary to find/fix the problem is **** near impossible. I was hoping anyone knew of something else I could try that wouldn't look so...hardcore...to a group of technophobes.

 

Hey TB,

Looks like they're giving you a hard time and it's not even your computer/fault and that really sucks!

It's like working in an IT dept, you pretty much have to give them the options:

1. Let me do what's necessary to find out what's causing the problem and then to get the problem fixed.

OR

2. Don't let me do anything & keep blaming me for these problems, but your computer's still not going to work.

This may not go too well with your girlfriend, but I guess you gotta stand tough if you want the notebook repaired.

-Vb-

 

Just don't install mouse software for that extra mouse. It shouldn't be necesary at all. It should just work when you plug it in.