I have a Toshiba laptop that's hardly been used. Hard drive reads less than 500 total power on hours in just over one year of usage. It's had no knocks or bumps and looks practically brand new. It refuses to POST. Upon pressing the power button the lights come on and the fan spins up, however the display remains off. The fan then seems to woosh intermittently, it'll spin for a second, stop for a second, spin for a second.... you get the idea. Nothing else. The DVD drive can be opened during this state showing there is power going into it. What I've tried: Removing hard drive to see if it would POST Removing Battery (running off power supply) Tried replacement battery. Tried running off external monitor connected via VGA and HDMI. The monitor light remained active blue as if it was trying to receive a signal, however nothing ever came on the screen. Also tried using the FN key to activate external display... nothing. Tested the RAM in another laptop and it posted fine Swapped the RAM from Slot 1 to Slot 2 (This was strange as it refused to power on at all) Tried other compatible RAM and it also failed to power on with this, only powering on with the original RAM module. I stripped it down to the Mobo to check for any burning around the GPU/CPU. Nothing at all. The TIM was well worn away on the heatsink over the CPU, the square pad had worn away in the middle. However if it was going to overheat it would cut out as it has thermal cut out protection. There was also no sign of burning or even that strange smell when CPU's burn. So I'm ruling that out. So. The problem looks like it lies with the motherboard. However where and what? I've no idea. It seems very strange for a laptop with so little use to just stop working suddenly. Cheers!
If you do need a motherboard for it, PM me the model and serial of the unit and I'll get you a quote for a new motherboard direct from Toshiba via my work. If it's a Windows 8 unit, we can inject a new key into the BIOS too so there are no activation issues but we'll need the full machine to do that.
