[Wolfeymole]

You're welcome mate.

[Advertisements]

Hi,

Its important to know if the machine have a dedicated graphic card or on-board with shared memory.

Edited by SleepyDude, 10 May 2013 - 06:56 AM.

[SleepyDude]

Hi,

Its important to know if the machine have a dedicated graphic card or on-board with shared memory.

Edited by SleepyDude, 10 May 2013 - 06:56 AM.

[Relemar]

Its a Philips Freevents

[Wolfeymole]

I thought you said this was a Toshiba machine Relemar.

[Relemar]

I did, I always get them mixed up. It's a Philips Freevents

[Wolfeymole]

Philips yuk.

I mean who would trust a manufacturer who also makes steam irons and washing machines lol.

Anyway enough of the levity, 99% of laptops have integrated graphics so to me it's that or a fault with the motherboard.

See what Sleep Dude has to say though first.

[SleepyDude]

I did, I always get them mixed up. It's a Philips Freevents

Can you find the exact model?

How did you test the memory?

[Relemar]

I'm not home at the minute, but I will look later. I don't think it says anything else on it to be honest. Using Memtest86+, I've also replaced it with working RAM from another laptop.. same thing. I've also changed the hard drive.. same thing. Thanks guys!

[Relemar]

I've nailed it down to missing SATA drivers. Can't boot from USB/floppy so will try Vista. Hopefully that works as the laptop is made for it. Its a Philips Freeevents H12Y.

[Wolfeymole]

Any OS from XP SP3 onwards would load the sata drivers on install.

[SleepyDude]

I've nailed it down to missing SATA drivers. Can't boot from USB/floppy so will try Vista. Hopefully that works as the laptop is made for it. Its a Philips Freeevents H12Y.

Hi,

Good to know. In you case if I had a Windows 7 license I would ditch Vista.

Edit: In case you need some Drivers for the machine check this page it seems the Philips machines are Twinhead re-branded!

Edited by SleepyDude, 11 May 2013 - 06:00 AM.

[Relemar]

But saying that, the laptop still freezes when loading Ubuntu CD (before it tries to install or anything). Which makes me think its not drivers because its on Ubuntu! If I boot from anything, it always hangs on the splash screens. XP, Vista, 7 etc. I can't get the drivers because they're .EXE and they need to be .INF to use with vLite. Ive tried ubuntu 32bit but now trying 64bit. Ive read its something relating to BIOS but I cant update it because I cant boot from USB/Floppy (or get into windows)

[Relemar]

With XP it crashes just after the ahcix86.sys driver has loaded, then hangs. With Vista & 7 it hangs on the Splash Screen. Ubuntu it crashes on a black screen with a dash in the top left, just after a small logo at the bottom of the screen.

[Buddierdl]

This is kind of a wild guess but it has helped me before.

Look for any "SATA" setting in BIOS and make sure that they are set to IDE or Compatibility mode and not AHCI, at least while installing the OS.

[Relemar]

Hi mate,

There is no option to change to IDE in the BIOS. This has a SATA hard drive which is weird for a laptop of this age, thats where the problems are. It was too advanced for its own good and has an old BIOS.

I've just took the hard drive out and tried to boot from Ubuntu Live CD.. still hangs. Does that not rule out hard drive? Ive seen that article but I cant stick drivers on using nLite or vLite because they're .EXE and it needs .INF. Could it have short circuited? The person who owns the laptop said the wires we're hanging out the charger so they replaced it.

This laptop has a SATA hard drive which was quite rare for a laptop this old to have one. But still it should still work when I boot from a live CD without a hard drive in? I've reset BIOS, cleared MBR, everything. I'm beginning to think its the motherboard, somethings short circuited from the dodgy charger. What happened, is the laptop ran out of charge and went off, plugged charged in and it made a popping noise. It's used to hang when starting windows so I formatted the hard drive and it still hangs on CDs etc.