A200 Toshiba Satellite Random Restarts / Freeze When on AC

Symptoms:

• Random restarts
• Boots ok on battery
• Toshiba A200 Satellite laptop
• Over 4 years old
• Works in safe mode
  

Solutions:

• Boot up in Safe Mode
• Start > Control Panel > System > Device Manager > Processors
• Disable both processors
• Restart the laptop
• Boot into normal Windows
• Should work fine, if not you may want to look at the rest of this blog
• This is apparently a temporary fix and your laptop will not last years and years without replacing a chip (see below)
  

Causes (Possible):

• Poor battery life and power switching between AC and battery
• A NEC chip on the motherboard that regulates power is deteriorating and causing the laptop to not power properly

Alternative fixes:

1. Set power settings to Power Saver
2. Set power to High Performance
3. Boot into BIOS and change Dynamic CPU Frequency Mode = Always Low (NOT DYNAMIC)
   
4. Charge up battery and only use laptop on battery

More Info (Google key words such as):

• a200 toshiba random restarts
• Satellite A200 freezes or restarts anytime
• A200 restarts when plugged into AC
• Toshiba laptop freezing when charger is pluggded in
• Toshiba Random Freeze/ Shutdown/ Restart
• a200 toshiba NEC/TOKIN OE128 Proadlizer Capacitor problems
  

Toshiba Laptop Speakers Drop Out (Going Mono)

Toshiba Laptop Speakers Drop Out. the only solution I can see for fixing this so far is turning up the volume from the volume wheel and then decreasing the volume from the media player or whatever your using.

anyone else have a more permanent fix?

HDMI partners, the break up story

It turns out that it was fairly good plug and play (Toshiba A200/W00 and Philips LCD HDTV)

The problems was the HDTV and Laptop were forced into a 700 resolution. My laptop is 800 and the HDTv is 1080 so that was disappointing. After some fiddling around with the resolution, I ended up messing up the PnP and now the HDTV won't even display anything so back it goes to 700, everything is bigger and some parts of my screen on my laptop is crammed. But I am mainly using it for display videos so it should be fine for time being. Keep you posted if I find out how to make the HDTv 1080 and my laptop 800. That would be awesom. Suggestions also welcomed.


BTW the way I fix the no signal problem was to bring the HDTv's resolution back to 700 and did that via the ATI Catalyst program and also the Display Properties (Right click desktop > Personalise > Display Properties)

Super Browser Hijacker Attack

Recently, My Laptop's Vista partition has been hacked at by a Virus that hijacks my browsers both FireFox and Internet Explorer.

Hijacking involves something like:

* When you hit a result in Google it opens to a new advertising related website
* You can't type in and hit enter some websites
* It is hard to download as all links in the browser are redirected to some other search engine (non-genuine) or some advert web site.


This was a scary experience for me as it showed that my usual trust applications could not find let alone attack and save me from this nasty.

My usual trust apps found some problems but none found the virus that's causing this web havoc:

* Spy Bot S&D
* Avast AV
* AVG AV +SW
* Ad-Aware
* Commodo Firewall
* Vista Windows Defender


SOME WORK AROUND:

* Use Google to find a web page say for solutions to this hijacker, and then use the cached pages, for my virus i found it was scared of google

* Use Google translator and paste in the web link and then use non-English ---> English for English websites, using Google Translator seems to proxy through somewhere avoiding the redirects

* Use a different computer and download/search problem resolutions (Most effective)




SOLUTIONS (Possible)

Download an excellent software called Malwarebytes Anti-Malware

Installed it and with only a quick scan it fixed my problem, so far (Hoping it will stay this way after a reboot)

BTW the virus that got me was called "Trojan.Agent" according to the software scan results.

I got my information from:
http://forums.cnet.com/5208-6132_102-0.html?forumID=32&threadID=310254&messageID=2868932

Please upgrade to the Pro version cause this is seriously the best detection tool, its a keeper.
Will do a review on it after i see how the reboot goes.



Example hijack redirect destinations

http://go.google.com http://bridge1.admarketplace.net Myaussiesearch.com http://www.theglobalsearchengine.com http://www.clicktosee.com.au
http://analystspecies.info/search.php? http://impactmedicine.info
http://www.ozpricehunter.com http://77.91.229.143/click.php?
http://questionnaire-guardian.info http://blow-operation.info http://ranksupplement.info
http://classroom-lot.info http://festival-gaze.info
http://stimulussock.info http://77.91.229.143/click.php?
http://revenue-classification.info http://4yousauce.info
http://banfuture.info/search.php? http://condition-draft.info
http://abuseobstacle.info http://biassickness.info
http://bomberworry.info

Some More Info, Google : "trojan.agent redirects", no "" required


Registry keys
affected:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\tdssdata

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\tdss


The problem i found i had was i only knew the websites it was redirecting me to and had no idea about the name of virus so couldn't get rid of it. Please save some website addresses you've been redirected to and post them here for future reference to others (if you've been attacked by the same kind of virus, thansk).

Belkin Tech. Support (Temp Fix?)

OK, I went online for ages and couldn't find a solution so I decided to call technical support, so hopefully you don't after reading this site.

Background Info on my specific case:

• Belkin G Plus Mimo Router has drop outs during download and streaming music
• Belkin model number: F5D9230-4
• Original firmware with problem: V 5.01.16
• Updated to firmware V 5.02.08 (temp fix?)
  
• Location: Australia
• ISP: Bigpond (home user)
• I personally think this is a temp fix, as firmware is pre-release version and only available in the UK website. I think if you live elsewhere like Australia you should be able to get a formal release and update at a later date and be able to fix just using "firmware update" function with no technical support needed but if you want a fix now! read on.
  

The steps I went through with Tech. support:

Things you may not want/need to follow:

• Asked for my phone, full name, e-mail
• Asked for my router model and firmware version
• Asked for my problem
• Why did i put this here? who knows. Just skip to next section really
  

Things your interested in (the possible fix):

• I was told to disable my firewall first, not sure if you need to but don't say I didn't tell you so if you needed to.
  
• Go to www.belkin.com/uk/support OR if you have the same model as I do:
  http://belkin.com/uk/support/article/?lid=enu&pid=F5D9230uk4&aid=9465&scid=282
• IF NOT, choose your router model on that page
• Download the firmware update
• Open the main control page for your Belkin router (should be http://192.168.X.X)
  
• Go to the "Utilities" heading on the left hand menu
• Choose "Firmware Update"
• Read that page carefully and make a backup of your existing settings
• Then use the [browse] button and locate the new firmware file and update your router.

• I had mine stop responding for a while and it tells you that is normal
• But mine like really didn't come back to life at all
• I hit the reset button on the back (of router) and then restarted my computers and checked the main control page and firmware updated! it shows the new version number at least.
• I downloaded a 10Mb file, 3MB file and a 7MB file and it seemed to be fixed now, soon I will test for a 200MB + file to see if it has really fixed it up good.
  

I am just a student of IT (barely). I am NOT a technician nor qualified for it and don't work for Belkin. I only post this for my own future reference. You may follow and use my advice at your own risk. I am not responsible.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Personal Record of downloading, showing max file size downloaded before disconnection.

Before Update Fails: 73MB, 9MB, 3MB, 2.1MB, 10MB, 17MB, 34MB
Before Update Successes: 2KB, 5KB, 1.2MB

After Update Successes: 9MB, 3MB, 7MB, 13MB, 16MB, 44MB, 2.1MB, 14MB, 202MB

Yet to try: 700MB and 1.5GB


Again the main knot in the rope (difficulty in solving the problem) is that the firmware to fix the problem is only still in pre-release stage and available in UK website. In my knowledge its not in Australia and USA's website which was the problem many other on the net had.
Either use UK's website (see above) or wait until it is avaliable through the normal update process of your routers main settings page.

After solving this problem you appriciate working tech. so much ... :) so get going and make yourself happy.

FireFox 3 Add-on version overwrite

I was talking earlier about my add-ons not working after the FF3 update.
I've found a workaround, Currently all my add-ons work but i get 2 error messages when FF3 is launched so this is really a temporary solution until the add-ons get updated to the new version.

If your add-ons are vital to your browsing then this should work alright for the time being. I don't know what add-ons you have so I can't say how many errors you may get. Mine were not recurring so it isn't too annoying at least when compared to not being able to use add-on features.

Check this