Screen freezes in BIOS and Safe Mode

B

BM713

New Member
I’m working on a friend’s laptop: Toshiba, Satellite M65 - S9092

Original problem: The laptop started shutting down after few minutes of use. (Probably because overheating)

Took the laptop apart and clean it out. The heatsink, fan and outlets were really plugged up. Put it back together and did a clean re-install, Windows XP. Had few issues with USB drivers not being recognized but worked it out. Ran stress test for a whole day, no problem.

Worked for few days and then USB wasn’t being recognized again and the screen started freezing up. Re-installed OS but it is still freezing up after few minutes, and stays that way till hard shut down.

Screen freezes even in safe mode and in BIOS. (No blue screens)

Tried following:
Tried it with the battery removed…same results
I tried doing a clean boot but unfortunately I can’t get far enough before the screen freezes.

I picked up a PC diagnostic card and got this far:
The BIOS are Phoenix, but I can’t get far enough to find out which version.
When I started the laptop multiple times the initial readout on the PC diagnostics card is: 9d55

9D55
9d - Initialize security engine (optional)
55 - Enable USB devices
After the boot cycles pressing S1 the readout are (multiple starts with freezing):
5755 – 569d – 55CC - 588A

http://www.bioscentral.com/postcodes/phoenixbios.htm

The test may be inconclusive because of freezing but any thoughts on the post code results

Ran the memtest 86+ and got an incomplete info screen.
Installed new RAM, same problem.

Any assistance is appreciated.
 
The only time I came across a pc freezing in the bios was a bad memory setting in the bios. Once I changed it, everything worked fine. However, with this being a laptop, you might not have the ability to change the memory settings.

What memory is installed in the machine?
 
The old RAM: two Hynix 512MB PC4200
The new RAM is Kingston 1GB 200-Pin DDR2 SO-DIMM DDR2 533 (PC2 4200)
I just went into BIOS and checked, you're right, it doesn't allow you to change memory setting.
It's showing:
System Memory - 640KB
Extended Memory - 1022MB
And it froze few times while in BIOS same end result.
Also, I didn’t mention before is that when booting up, the screen would stay black till I hit enter few times then it would start loading and freeze soon afterwords.
I never ran across this before, check few books and can't find any reference. I’m open to any suggestions.
Thanks
 
It sounds like you have faulty memory, I had the same kind of issues. But I got an RMA, maybe you can return it where you bought it from for a replacement?
 
Got a RMA and will see if the new memory resolves the issue.

I had previous issues with faulty memory on another PC but it allowed me to run diagnostics.
Do you think that faulty memory would prevent the memtest 86+ from running at all and giving some kind of results.
 
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