Toshiba satellite L500 won't post?

[KvnTM]

Re: Toshiba satellite L500 won't post?

The GPU is a ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4500 which are not known to cause issues as far as I can tell.
The Intel PCH is a 82GM45 with integrated graphics.

My best bet would be the PCH since you had problems with the POST screen before which runs off the integrated graphics. This would also explain why you get an image as soon as windows is loaded up because it switches to the ati gpu.

[piernov]

Re: Toshiba satellite L500 won't post?

The yellow chip is an MCH in Intel's terminology, commonly called the northbridge. It is a Core 2 platform, so it has an MCH (northbridge) and an ICH (southbridge), as opposed to newer platforms that only have a PCH (southbridge, the northbridge is mostly integrated into the CPU).

They almost never fail, and when they do it's usually completely shorted.
On the other hand, the ATi GPU can fail. Situation is not as bad as the HD6000 series, but they are still not reliable chips.
A bad GPU can prevent POST, and depending on how the platform is designed it may not post without the graphics card either.
And usually even if there is an integrated GPU (inside the MCH, which makes it a GMCH), it's not enabled if the laptop is sold with a graphics card. Those older platforms usually didn't have switchable graphics.


Btw, it's almost never a solder ball issue.

[mcplslg123]

Re: Toshiba satellite L500 won't post?

I agree with @piernov's views

[123XYZ123]

Re: Toshiba satellite L500 won't post?

I assembled it together and heated once again the ATI GPU today, wasn't working yesterday. Now it works and I can see even the boot at beginning on the laptop screen, not only the windows boot.
Let's see for how long will it work tho heh
Should I flash the latest BIOS while I can do it from windows?
Thanks again for the help guys.

[KvnTM]

Re: Toshiba satellite L500 won't post?

I assembled it together and heated once again the ATI GPU today, wasn't working yesterday. Now it works and I can see even the boot at beginning on the laptop screen, not only the windows boot.
Let's see for how long will it work tho heh
Should I flash the latest BIOS while I can do it from windows?
Thanks again for the help guys.

Theres no need to update the bios because it has nothing to do with it an it will fail again in the next days or even hours. Don't do anything important on that machine it is a ticking bomb.

[123XYZ123]

Re: Toshiba satellite L500 won't post?

It was working for a while (maybe a month) but then it stopped again as you said. I tried heating it again but I overdid it
The fan I used was too powerful and I did it for too long.
Anyways, I found a replacement card but not sure which to choose from tehse 2: AMD ATI Mobility Radeon HD4500

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570

The one in my laptop is the second one, Im not sure does a 4500 even exists? Isn't that the name of the series?
Thanks