My Toshiba 2435 laptop finally DIED. It's been crashing for about a month after using it for an hour or so, then the time before crash became less and less until finally it wouldn't load WinXP without dying. (By this time WinXP had become corrupted from the crashes, asked me to boot normally, safe more, or COMMAND prompt....using either method would cause the computer to DIE after a couple of minutes).

Tried reformatting HD using recover disc, crashed within a very few minutes during the formatting process.

Bought new HD which crashed during formatting just as the old one did.

I switched ram around before reformatting to eliminate that as the problem. Removed battery to eliminate that as a remotely possible source.

Bottom line is this laptop TRIES to do everything normally for +/- 10 minutes then just dies. Actually the last time I attempted reformatting the recover disc did complete the formatting process and started its next step before the crash. Next I removed the recover disc, rebooted and got a command prompt A:\. I typed "dir" and can see where basic system files were installed.

For the past 6 hours the computer has been on, no crash but of COURSE no HD activity because I'm not calling for any. So this thing crashes only when the HD is active and the HD itself is not the problem.

Any thoughts on fixing this thing. It's only about 3 years old, P4, 2.4 and loaded. I don't want to throw it in the trash if I can help it.

Thanks !





It appears to be overheating.Is the cooling fan dirty?

http://mobileoffice.about.com/od/usingyourlaptop/a/cleanlaptop.htm