Toshiba Satellite A215-S4747 powers off randomly

The system came with Vista preloaded, and i hate it so I am replacing it with XP pro. I booted from the XP install disk and the system powered off repeatedly at the screen that asks which partition to use, and other times just before that screen. I have XP home as well, and tried that disk, same story.
my bios was v1.7, so I upgraded it to v2.0 . system powered off again during verify of the bios flash. after restart I opened the bios utility and it appeared to have updated, but just to be sure, I attempted to flash it again. 2nd attempt it powered off in same spot. now, the system was working fine before the attempted install, as well as when I allowed vista to boot up between install attempts. It almost seems like it's an overheating problem, except that it does not beep or anything when it shuts off.

I left it alone for about an hour and then tried again this time it got all the way through setting up the partition and loading install files. I thought that it was working finally, but then after it rebooted It died again.

http://cdgenp01.csd.toshiba.com//content/product/pdf_files/detailed_specs/satellite_A215-S4747.pdf for system specs.


any help would be appreciated. thanks.

 

Sounded like missing SATA driver issue. Either you turn off AHCI support in Bios - if the option is present - or get yourself the SATA driver. Browse the Toshiba section for tips and links

cheers ...

 

I was actually about to post that i had figured it out. i had previously used nLite to add the SATA driver, and that didnt work. I was waiting for a new install disk with the processor drivers included this time to burn, and i took apart the machine. I dusted everything out, and there was a little bit of lint inside there, and I think that may have been an Issue. i also put the laptop on a cooling pad then next time I ran the install and sure enough, it worked smooth as butter.

I guess what was happening was the airflow was restricted, CPU heavy functions were causing it to overheat. It's wierd that that would be an issue, because I play a few games now and then, and the computer is running almost constantly, and it had never shut off like that before.

do you think that the processor driver was the issue or the cooling problem?

 

I was reading your first post and I immediately thought it was a cooling problem. The fact that you let it sit for a while and then got further in the installation process furthered my certainty.

In your following post when you said you cleaned it and removed lint and now everything works good. This makes my hypothesis 100% correct. Keep your computer clean man and all should be well.

 

One or the other, or both. Update your cpu with its latest available driver and see.

cheers ...