I Need Help With an Old Laptop

[Halfblind]

The laptop in question is a Toshiba Satellite L305-S5919. I know that laptop is over a decade old, but it's been in my life for quite a while, so I'll be very sad to see it go.

 

The issue is that every time that I turn it on the screen goes completely blue, red, black, yellow or white depending on what background color the open application uses. It's mostly blue because of the background color of my desktop.

 

The only way to fix this sometimes is to powercycle it, but turning it back on could cause the issue to happen again. I want to backup my files, but in the middle of doing so the computer crashes again.

 

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, I would really hate to lose all my projects and all my hard work.

[⇛Marnetmar⇛]

How long are you generally able to operate it before it crashes?

[Halfblind]

@Marn Most of the time it takes less than a minute after it's turned on before it crashes. Sometimes it's completely random and could crash immediately or after about 10 minutes.

 

I did try reseating the RAM, HDD, Battery and even checked the connection to the monitor to no avail.

[⇛Marnetmar⇛]

Sounds like it's probably a CPU issue to me. You may be able to retrieve the necessary files from the HDD by putting it in an enclosure and hooking it up to another device?

[Jello]

I guess my first thought would be to just get a cheap 2.5" SATA to USB cable, take the drive out and plug it into another computer, and if the HDD still works, transfer the files from it to the other computer. Might be a slow transfer, but you'll get your data back.

 

My two cents, but that's probably how I would go about it. Assuming you have another computer available. 

[DooM Bear]

Have you checked the system temps?

 

@Doomkid had a crashing problem a little while ago due to a wad of cat fur preventing airflow and I think I remember someone mentioning flashing colours when theirs was overheating but can’t seem to find to old thread to check!

 

Regardless (provided you are comfortable with it) it might be worth opening her up, vacuuming it out and changing the thermal paste just to see if that helps if you haven’t already :-)

 

It’s a quick, easy and cheap thing to do so I’d probably give it a crack as best case it might fix it completely and worst case you only waste $0.50 in thermal paste and 10 minutes :-P

[Vic Vos]

31 minutes ago, DooM Bear said:

a wad of cat fur

lmao

 

Yeah, what @DooM Bear said - clean it up real good and apply some fresh thermal paste. If it starts to work better after that, optionally you could either find a new fan or lube (( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)) the old one with some fan oil. But if it's still acting up after cleaning, then something's screwed.

I've been maintaining my now 11-year old laptop doing what I've written above and it's doing just fine - it still has its uses after all these years. Though, I think I need to look for a new battery, the old one's about to croak. And a new screen matrix, just in case.

Edited December 3, 2020 by Vic Vos

[Jello]

9 hours ago, DooM Bear said:

Have you checked the system temps?

 

@Doomkid had a crashing problem a little while ago due to a wad of cat fur preventing airflow and I think I remember someone mentioning flashing colours when theirs was overheating but can’t seem to find to old thread to check!

 

Regardless (provided you are comfortable with it) it might be worth opening her up, vacuuming it out and changing the thermal paste just to see if that helps if you haven’t already :-)

 

It’s a quick, easy and cheap thing to do so I’d probably give it a crack as best case it might fix it completely and worst case you only waste $0.50 in thermal paste and 10 minutes :-P

Yeah, that's true. I was kind of just thinking the thing sounds like it just broke it's last leg, so I went to data recovery mode. Although, even if it turns out to be a temp issue that can be solved with a thorough cleaning and some thermal paste, it wouldn't hurt to backup the data elsewhere anyway. Things can go wrong, especially after 10 years, and especially with HDD's, so if the HDD is still working, get that data while you can.

 

All computer owners know the heartbreak of losing data. Everything else can be upgraded or replaced, but once you lose the data, it's gone.

 

And yeah, I remember that @Doomkidthread. That game me a good laugh when he figured it out. I did clean my tower after that, but my cat doesn't spend much time around it so the fur was minimal. Mostly just the usual dust bunnies.

Edited December 3, 2020 by Jello