X205-SLi4 just died...help me!

..So I figured that I would load up some old games that I haven't played for a while, and I chose to load up Far Cry. It installed ok and everything, and I start playing. I was getting like 130FPS, and everything was all well and good. I get past the first cutscene and I just finished climbing the ladder when *blink* the notebook suddenly shuts off. I tried turning it back on but then realized that NONE of the lights are on, even though it is plugged in. Same with the battery. Thats it. My 3 month old (to the day) notebook has suddenly died, quietly, no smoke, pop or anything.

WTF am I going to do? I'm halfway through taking the thing apart and I haven't found anything suspiciously dead looking. I have taken it apart ~6 times and the last time I ripped it open was in mid-April and it has worked flawlessly until now. I am literally on the verge of crying because I spent 2400 dollars on this thing and after 3 months it has died, a week before vacation. My dad is going to be uber pissed, and it looks like I will not have a notebook to take on vacation now, unless I find the problem. Any suggestions for the cause of this "sudden death"???

-J.B.

 

UPDATE: I detached everything from the motherboard (including VGA cards), removed the CPU heatsink and put it back on. I then plugged the power cable back in and the plug LED came on, so I guess I am making a little bit of progress here.

-J.B.

 

If you got warranty, go get it repaired.

 

You cant "repair" anything inside. You have the warranty.Get it covered.

 

Another update: So it seems that the 3 wire PCIe GPU power is shorting to the ground (don't ask me how) so if I disconnect it (which allows the laptop to have power and not short out) can I run just the master 8600 GT card without the extra PCIe power, and completely remove the 2nd 8600 GT piggybacked onto it? I know that on some desktop motherboards that if you are just using one videocard, you don't need to plug in the molex power connector into the board but if you do use SLi, you have to plug the molex in (this was on an AMD/nVidia nForce 590i SLI board). I am hoping that the laptop will be ok with just the master 8600 until I get the thing fixed. Any suggestions?

Edit: using a single card without the 3 pin pwer plugged in results in a long and 2 short beeps and no display. ugh.

-J.B.

 

The suggestion has been made a couple of times and you've totally ignored it. So why are you not sending your machine back under warranty (and ignoring the suggestion)?

 

Yeah, I'm sorry about that but I will send it in under warranty because my last ditch efforts to find a simple fix didn't work. I did find the problem, and I can't fix it, so it is going back to Toshiba. Hopefully I can persuade my dad into letting me buy myself a second laptop because I really want one for vacation to play games. If he lets me I want to pick up a Gateway P-6860FX from Bestbuy because it seems to be a good enough replacement for the Toshiba. I'm still unhappy about it breaking after 3 months, but hopefully I can get the problem resolved under warranty and have a working laptop again, and have another laptop to use over vacation.

Thanks to all for the most obvious solution which is send it back to get fixed and sorry I made you guys think I ignored it.

-J.B.

 

Sorry to hear about your ordeal, J.B. Yeah, you'd be better off using the warranty.

Now on the topic of warranty:
Do correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't taking the laptop apart void the warranty? I recall reading someone's x205 disassembly tutorial and coming across a very solid warning about how taking the machine apart can void the warranty.

 

If it doesn't look like it has been taken apart i.e no missing tape/stickers, broken connectors, missing screws, or messed up wiring inside then they should accept the waranty because they didn't know if you did it or not (hopefully).

-J.B.

 

I created the disassembly guide and did warn everyone on taking it apart would void your warranty. But if you do a good job putting it back together well they will honor the warranty, my video cards died on my sli1 laptop and I was able to get them replaced under warranty this was after having taken apart the laptop 3 times.

 

Yeah, funny how the last time I had taken the laptop apart was over 1 and a half months ago, and then the power supply built onto the master video card spontaneously shorted out, causing an entire system short that is removed only if you disconnect the 3 red wire plug that goes from it to the motherboard. And of course when you do that it is like removing the PCIe connector from your 8800GTX and expecting it to run. I really wish that it happened 2 weeks later because I am going on vacation with my family starting this Thursday and I am going to dread not having my PC. It is kind of retarded that Far Cry killed it because I had been playing Bioshock and Crysis for the last month and it didn't die. All I can hope is that I put it together ok enough to not have to buy like 600 dollars in parts and I hope that it doesn't die again. All I can say is that Toshiba basically ruined my vacation. I wish that their video card wasn't this hodge podge of cards on top of each other, making failure more likely. It would have been better if they used an 8800M GTS which is: 1 card, 256 bit memory bus, no need for the stupid PXE chip which just wastes more battery life and generates more heat, and the thing uses less power than the 2 8600s and is better. And, they could have thinned out the laptop with it lol. So yeah, that's my rant.

Oh, and don't let me forget lol, I typed this all on my rock solid 1998 Compaq Presario 5170 that is still running after a decade with Windows 2000 Pro, a Pentium II 350, 512MB SDRAM, 120GB hard drive and a 4MB ATi Rage LT Pro soldered onboard lol. Hard to believe that it lasted a decade and yet my super advanced laptop barely squeaked out 3 months before it died. Ugh.

-J.B.

 

Hey guys,
Just got home from vacation to find that my laptop had come back from the service depot. They replaced Video Cards 1 and 2 and now the laptop is working again yay. The good part is that they covered it under warranty so either they didn't find out that I took it apart or the tech didn't care about it. So, all is well and I have my gaming laptop for the rest of summer . And thanks for reading (or not reading) my excessively long rants lol

-J.B.

 

My X205-SLi4 just did the same thing.

I was playing WOW. Set it down while I fixed myself lunch. Came back and it was off. No lights of any kind. Won't power on. No response at all.

At first, I thought the PS might be the issue, but trying with just battery and trying PS without battery didn't work. I even tried without battery on my wife's PS (She has one too.)

The system is completely unresponsive.

I'm calling support tonight after I get off work. We'll see what they say.

Glad to hear your's was fixed without incident.

I'll update when I know more.

~D

 

Yeah, my VGA card's main power circuit shorted itself out, causing a system-wide "blackout" even when the system is off. I had the video cards replaced (without incident) but later found out that the short had destroyed part of the motherboard which eventually led to the motherboard becoming unstable and eventually not POSTing. So I sent it back again and they replaced the motherboard and the GPUs again. The system works fine now except I told them to replace the GPU heatsinks because of a constant overheating problem right out of the box. They didn't replace the heatsinks so right now I can only play games with SLi turned off (which sucks) so that the GPUs don't hit 95c and kill my performance. I love everything about this laptop except for the ****** graphics and heatsink setup which truly sucks. Good luck with getting yours fixed man.

BTW it was retarded that it decided to die on an old game (FarCry) because I had been heavily playing Bioshock Crysis for a few weeks before and FarCry was getting 130FPS.

-J.B.

 

Is this related to the problem Nvidia is having with their cards?

 

I am not sure, but it seems like Toshiba didn't design the voltage regulation system too well because I can't even complete 3DMark @ 550MHz core/ stock memory clocks WITHOUT SLi and the temperatures are fine on the one card being used. 3DMark crashes in between tests with a blank screen and the entire system freezes and there is a lot of electrical noise (resonating inductors I suppose) coming out of the GPU vent.

-J.B.