Notebook freezing when connected to external power supply

[Meat Plow]

On Sun, 25 Apr 2010 15:42:49 -0500, Jeffrey D Angus
<jangus@suddenlink.net>wrote:

Meat Plow wrote:
On Sun, 25 Apr 2010 14:57:49 -0500, Jeffrey D Angus
jangus@suddenlink.net>wrote:

Meat Plow wrote:
On Sun, 25 Apr 2010 04:42:58 -0400, Jamie
jamie_ka1lpa_not_valid_after_ka1lpa_@charter.net>wrote:

some Laptops have a partition on the HD that has special set up
software at boot time to configure the proprietary onboard chips..
This also could be an issue..
What laptop(s) would have this feature?
Compaq, they were nortorious for having a special partition they would
fail to boot if they didn't find.

I've never owned a Compaq laptop but working in the industry when
Compaq was the workstation of choice I would have thought I'd read
about it somewhere. This must have been really proprietary as I've
never heard of a chipset needing to load code from a fixed drive
during boot. Can you give me an example of a model number and year
and what operating system? Not that I don't believe you I'm just a bit
taken back that onboard chips could be so proprietary that they
couldn't be produced with their own non-volitile embedded instruction
sets.


The Compaq Presario series comes to mind. They had a special 1-2 meg
partition on the hard drive that the bios looked for and not finding,
would hang the system. "OS NOT FOUND"

I found out the hard way, loading SCO Unix on one, going through the
entire ordeal of loading the operating system (and mistaking wiping
the service partition, then rebooting and finding I had to (a) replace
the service partition and reload the service software and (b) start
from scratch again with SCO Unix install.

Wel that's really odd. OS not found usually means the BIOS can't find
the MBR or the bootloader can't find the partition, the directory of
executables including the OS kernel as described in the boot.ini file
of a Windows OS. I'll have to do some research and find out just what
chips are uploaded code from this 'service' partition just to satisfy
my curiosity.

 

[Jamie]

Meat Plow wrote:

On Sun, 25 Apr 2010 04:42:58 -0400, Jamie
jamie_ka1lpa_not_valid_after_ka1lpa_@charter.net>wrote:


some Laptops have a partition on the HD that has special set up
software at boot time to configure the proprietary onboard chips..
This also could be an issue..


What laptop(s) would have this feature?

Acers off the top of my head. Maybe not the current
ones.. But I had to correct an older one that did this.
The owner installed a newer OS, The process reported that
the current partition was not the primary one and asked if
he wish to make the install the primary one etc... etc..
And he did.....................
etc
All was going just fine until it was time to reboot, when
he did, windows could not find the CD rom, any longer.

To fix it, we move the HD to a USB external drive cable I have on
another PC and used the recover CD that restored the HD back to
original. Put it back in the laptop and then install the new OS over
the existing one. That worked out fine..

Take it for what you want, if you have been around long enough,
this isn't a new technique, things like this was done back in the
hay day to configure your HD, the device settings were on the HD
platter.

 

[Jamie]

Jeffrey D Angus wrote:

Meat Plow wrote:

On Sun, 25 Apr 2010 14:57:49 -0500, Jeffrey D Angus
jangus@suddenlink.net>wrote:

Meat Plow wrote:

On Sun, 25 Apr 2010 04:42:58 -0400, Jamie
jamie_ka1lpa_not_valid_after_ka1lpa_@charter.net>wrote:

some Laptops have a partition on the HD that has special set up
software at boot time to configure the proprietary onboard chips..
This also could be an issue..

What laptop(s) would have this feature?

Compaq, they were nortorious for having a special partition they
would fail to boot if they didn't find.


I've never owned a Compaq laptop but working in the industry when
Compaq was the workstation of choice I would have thought I'd read
about it somewhere. This must have been really proprietary as I've
never heard of a chipset needing to load code from a fixed drive
during boot. Can you give me an example of a model number and year
and what operating system? Not that I don't believe you I'm just a bit
taken back that onboard chips could be so proprietary that they
couldn't be produced with their own non-volitile embedded instruction
sets.


The Compaq Presario series comes to mind. They had a special 1-2 meg
partition on the hard drive that the bios looked for and not finding,
would hang the system. "OS NOT FOUND"

I found out the hard way, loading SCO Unix on one, going through the
entire ordeal of loading the operating system (and mistaking wiping
the service partition, then rebooting and finding I had to (a) replace
the service partition and reload the service software and (b) start
from scratch again with SCO Unix install.

Jeff


Fun, isn't it

 

[Jamie]

Meat Plow wrote:

On Sun, 25 Apr 2010 15:42:49 -0500, Jeffrey D Angus
jangus@suddenlink.net>wrote:


Meat Plow wrote:

On Sun, 25 Apr 2010 14:57:49 -0500, Jeffrey D Angus
jangus@suddenlink.net>wrote:


Meat Plow wrote:

On Sun, 25 Apr 2010 04:42:58 -0400, Jamie
jamie_ka1lpa_not_valid_after_ka1lpa_@charter.net>wrote:


some Laptops have a partition on the HD that has special set up
software at boot time to configure the proprietary onboard chips..
This also could be an issue..

What laptop(s) would have this feature?

Compaq, they were nortorious for having a special partition they would
fail to boot if they didn't find.

I've never owned a Compaq laptop but working in the industry when
Compaq was the workstation of choice I would have thought I'd read
about it somewhere. This must have been really proprietary as I've
never heard of a chipset needing to load code from a fixed drive
during boot. Can you give me an example of a model number and year
and what operating system? Not that I don't believe you I'm just a bit
taken back that onboard chips could be so proprietary that they
couldn't be produced with their own non-volitile embedded instruction
sets.


The Compaq Presario series comes to mind. They had a special 1-2 meg
partition on the hard drive that the bios looked for and not finding,
would hang the system. "OS NOT FOUND"

I found out the hard way, loading SCO Unix on one, going through the
entire ordeal of loading the operating system (and mistaking wiping
the service partition, then rebooting and finding I had to (a) replace
the service partition and reload the service software and (b) start

from scratch again with SCO Unix install.

Wel that's really odd. OS not found usually means the BIOS can't find
the MBR or the bootloader can't find the partition, the directory of
executables including the OS kernel as described in the boot.ini file
of a Windows OS. I'll have to do some research and find out just what
chips are uploaded code from this 'service' partition just to satisfy
my curiosity.
A lot of these machines had/have simple controllers. Many of them really

don't function much, or not at all. The firmware is uploaded from that
partition or service boot that redirects the boot process, which is a
hard one to fix if you're trying to upgrade.. The devices come alive
when the firmware is uploaded and executed. This is kind of a neat way
of doing things because, you can control the firmware release depending
on the region, regulations etc... For example, lets say we program the
CD rom controller to not allow you to read some security CD's or regions
that don't match yours, Network access depending on where you are, this
way, they don't need different hardware PC's. All they need to do is put
in the correct HD that fits the location of where it's going.

It's also a good way I guess to perform firmware updates by simply
updating the service section and doing a cold boot. That's when the fun
starts if the update didn't go well

 

[Meat Plow]

On Mon, 26 Apr 2010 09:55:08 -0400, Jamie
<jamie_ka1lpa_not_valid_after_ka1lpa_@charter.net>wrote:

Meat Plow wrote:

On Sun, 25 Apr 2010 04:42:58 -0400, Jamie
jamie_ka1lpa_not_valid_after_ka1lpa_@charter.net>wrote:


some Laptops have a partition on the HD that has special set up
software at boot time to configure the proprietary onboard chips..
This also could be an issue..


What laptop(s) would have this feature?

Acers off the top of my head. Maybe not the current
ones.. But I had to correct an older one that did this.
The owner installed a newer OS, The process reported that
the current partition was not the primary one and asked if
he wish to make the install the primary one etc... etc..
And he did.....................
etc
All was going just fine until it was time to reboot, when
he did, windows could not find the CD rom, any longer.

To fix it, we move the HD to a USB external drive cable I have on
another PC and used the recover CD that restored the HD back to
original. Put it back in the laptop and then install the new OS over
the existing one. That worked out fine..

Take it for what you want, if you have been around long enough,
this isn't a new technique, things like this was done back in the
hay day to configure your HD, the device settings were on the HD
platter.

First PC built back in 1990. I don't understand why a seprate
partition would be needed to load drivers, that's all.

 

[Meat Plow]

On Mon, 26 Apr 2010 10:11:36 -0400, Jamie
<jamie_ka1lpa_not_valid_after_ka1lpa_@charter.net>wrote:

Meat Plow wrote:

On Sun, 25 Apr 2010 15:42:49 -0500, Jeffrey D Angus
jangus@suddenlink.net>wrote:


Meat Plow wrote:

On Sun, 25 Apr 2010 14:57:49 -0500, Jeffrey D Angus
jangus@suddenlink.net>wrote:


Meat Plow wrote:

On Sun, 25 Apr 2010 04:42:58 -0400, Jamie
jamie_ka1lpa_not_valid_after_ka1lpa_@charter.net>wrote:


some Laptops have a partition on the HD that has special set up
software at boot time to configure the proprietary onboard chips..
This also could be an issue..

What laptop(s) would have this feature?

Compaq, they were nortorious for having a special partition they would
fail to boot if they didn't find.

I've never owned a Compaq laptop but working in the industry when
Compaq was the workstation of choice I would have thought I'd read
about it somewhere. This must have been really proprietary as I've
never heard of a chipset needing to load code from a fixed drive
during boot. Can you give me an example of a model number and year
and what operating system? Not that I don't believe you I'm just a bit
taken back that onboard chips could be so proprietary that they
couldn't be produced with their own non-volitile embedded instruction
sets.


The Compaq Presario series comes to mind. They had a special 1-2 meg
partition on the hard drive that the bios looked for and not finding,
would hang the system. "OS NOT FOUND"

I found out the hard way, loading SCO Unix on one, going through the
entire ordeal of loading the operating system (and mistaking wiping
the service partition, then rebooting and finding I had to (a) replace
the service partition and reload the service software and (b) start

from scratch again with SCO Unix install.

Wel that's really odd. OS not found usually means the BIOS can't find
the MBR or the bootloader can't find the partition, the directory of
executables including the OS kernel as described in the boot.ini file
of a Windows OS. I'll have to do some research and find out just what
chips are uploaded code from this 'service' partition just to satisfy
my curiosity.
A lot of these machines had/have simple controllers. Many of them really
don't function much, or not at all. The firmware is uploaded from that
partition or service boot that redirects the boot process, which is a
hard one to fix if you're trying to upgrade.. The devices come alive
when the firmware is uploaded and executed. This is kind of a neat way
of doing things because, you can control the firmware release depending
on the region, regulations etc... For example, lets say we program the
CD rom controller to not allow you to read some security CD's or regions
that don't match yours, Network access depending on where you are, this
way, they don't need different hardware PC's. All they need to do is put
in the correct HD that fits the location of where it's going.

It's also a good way I guess to perform firmware updates by simply
updating the service section and doing a cold boot. That's when the fun
starts if the update didn't go well

Well I hope this firmware had unlimited writes and not like the flash
firmware found today. I'd love to have a specific model of a laptop to
do a little research on. So far no one has been able to produce one.

 

[William R. Walsh]

Hi!

Can you give me an example of a model number and year
and what operating system?

As far as I know, Compaq never produced a system that *required* the
system partition to be in place. There was a set of bootable disks--
and I think you could even make them when booted from the system
partition--that would let you run system setup if you didn't have the
partion. Likewise, you could manage the partition from those
diskettes.

Perhaps it's possible that the system BIOS would become "annoyed" if
the partition wasn't removed in just the right way. I do know that I
ran a few systems without the partition and it always worked fine. (It
was a tremendous boon when dealing with users who could not leave
anything alone.)

Two such machines that I handled a lot of had this feature: The Compaq
Contura 410C and the Presario CDS526 both shipped with the setup
partition.

IBM took this idea a little further with what they called IML. This
was used in a few different models of the IBM PS/2 computers. In these
systems, there was just enough microcode present in a ROM on the
mainboard to let the system find its working BIOS from either a floppy
diskette or hard drive. In particular, the Models 56, 57, 76, 77 and
some configurations of the Model 90 and 95 used IML. I think it was
intended as an easier way to update the BIOS in these machines, the
working BIOS could be updated just by upgrading the system programs to
the latest release--a quick, easy and low risk thing to do. It was a
flashable BIOS before there really was such a thing.

The last of the PS/2s did use true flash BIOS technology with IBM's
SurePath. (There were only a very few machines to have that, however.)

William

 

[William Sommerwerck]

fluorescent, please.

 

[bahrouz]

do you use the same power outlet , try to use another one in another
room , check if there is a lamp or flurecent that keeps flickering in
the room that you use the computer in , if they fed from the same
power node with flickring flurecent the laptop will keep acting
crazy , its something i noticed ,it may help you determining what is
the real problem is , best wishes .

 

[bahrouz]

i noticed from sometime that when you connect a laptop to power outlet
that is fed from a node connected to a flickery flurecent lamp the
laptop will go crazy , so try to connect it to another power outlet in
another room , and see if it works hope thats help

 

[Mike De Petris]

On Apr 26, 9:37 pm, bahrouz <bahrouz.el3a...@gmail.com> wrote:

i noticed from sometime that when you connect a laptop to power outlet
that is fed from a node connected to a flickery flurecent lamp the
laptop will go crazy , so try to connect it to another power outlet in
another room , and see if it works hope thats help

thank you, anyway I tryed in two different houses, so this is not the
case

 

[Jerry Peters]

Meat Plow <mhywatt@yahoo.com> wrote:

On Sun, 25 Apr 2010 14:57:49 -0500, Jeffrey D Angus
jangus@suddenlink.net>wrote:

Meat Plow wrote:
On Sun, 25 Apr 2010 04:42:58 -0400, Jamie
jamie_ka1lpa_not_valid_after_ka1lpa_@charter.net>wrote:

some Laptops have a partition on the HD that has special set up
software at boot time to configure the proprietary onboard chips..
This also could be an issue..

What laptop(s) would have this feature?

Compaq, they were nortorious for having a special partition they would
fail to boot if they didn't find.

I've never owned a Compaq laptop but working in the industry when
Compaq was the workstation of choice I would have thought I'd read
about it somewhere. This must have been really proprietary as I've
never heard of a chipset needing to load code from a fixed drive
during boot. Can you give me an example of a model number and year
and what operating system? Not that I don't believe you I'm just a bit
taken back that onboard chips could be so proprietary that they
couldn't be produced with their own non-volitile embedded instruction
sets.

IIRC IBM did something similiar with certain PS/2 models which loaded

the ABIOS (advanced BIOS) from disk.

Jerry

 

[Mike De Petris]

On Apr 26, 11:24 pm, "William Sommerwerck"
<grizzledgee...@comcast.net> wrote:

fluorescent, please.

 

[Mike De Petris]

On Apr 24, 9:48 pm, Mike De Petris <mikedepet...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Apr 24, 8:30 pm, Meat Plow <mhyw...@yahoo.com> wrote:



On Fri, 23 Apr 2010 13:00:57 -0700 (PDT), Mike De Petris
mikedepet...@gmail.com>wrote:

I have a Toshiba Satellite A205 - S4777 that works perfect while on
battery, but the instance i plug the charger in, it freezes. First i
thought it was a Vista-Toshiba issue but only to discover that even in
BIOS it freezes instantly when the charger is plugged in. When the
laptop is off, any attempt to power it on while the charger is plugged
in, results only in a flicker of the power led.
I tried different chargers, ANY possible power options combinations in
Vista and Win7.

If I boot from battery and enter Windows Safe Mode, or Hiren's boot
CD, or WinXP mini all works fine even if I connect the power cord,
where normal Windows and BIOS freeze istantly.

I'm even thing of giving current directly by the battery contacts...
may this be possible?

Any help or advice on possible causes or solution to this issue would
be grateful. Thank you

Uninstall the Toshiba Power Managemnt utility if you have it
installed. If that fixes it try reinstalling it. If you don't have the
utility installed go to Toshiba and see if it is available for your
205 and the Vista platform.

I have plain Windows 7 installed at the moment, no Toshiba nor other
utilities, even never connected to the network.

Anyway it freezes even in the BIOS when connecting power.

don't know what more to check!

 

[Mike De Petris]

On 8 May, 11:57, Mike De Petris <mikedepet...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Apr 24, 9:48 pm, Mike De Petris <mikedepet...@gmail.com> wrote:



On Apr 24, 8:30 pm, Meat Plow <mhyw...@yahoo.com> wrote:

On Fri, 23 Apr 2010 13:00:57 -0700 (PDT), Mike De Petris
mikedepet...@gmail.com>wrote:

I have a Toshiba Satellite A205 - S4777 that works perfect while on
battery, but the instance i plug the charger in, it freezes. First i
thought it was a Vista-Toshiba issue but only to discover that even in
BIOS it freezes instantly when the charger is plugged in. When the
laptop is off, any attempt to power it on while the charger is plugged
in, results only in a flicker of the power led.
I tried different chargers, ANY possible power options combinations in
Vista and Win7.

If I boot from battery and enter Windows Safe Mode, or Hiren's boot
CD, or WinXP mini all works fine even if I connect the power cord,
where normal Windows and BIOS freeze istantly.

I'm even thing of giving current directly by the battery contacts...
may this be possible?

Any help or advice on possible causes or solution to this issue would
be grateful. Thank you

Uninstall the Toshiba Power Managemnt utility if you have it
installed. If that fixes it try reinstalling it. If you don't have the
utility installed go to Toshiba and see if it is available for your
205 and the Vista platform.

I have plain Windows 7 installed at the moment, no Toshiba nor other
utilities, even never connected to the network.

Anyway it freezes even in the BIOS when connecting power.

don't know what more to check!

the laptop is still apart, had little time to experiment, the two
fuses are ok will have to test capacitors, in the while I took away
the cmos battery and soldered two wires to use a standard cr2032 but
nothing changes


my idea now, is that if I am not able to find the faulty component,
that may well be a custom one, I will try to cut the connections to
the battery poles and connect using a 2-way deviator, so that in one
position the lapton can work like now, charging the battery when
switched off, or running on battery only, or trun the deviator/switch
and give voltage directly to the cutted terminals, excluding the
battery, with an external power supply, the pc should still detect the
battery charge level from other contacts of battery in place

should this work?