Systems covered: All failing to boot without lighting up display.
Goal of this Solution: Try to determine whether system is (a) booting successfully while failing to light its display (indicating hardware failure in the display), or (b) failing to light the display due to failure to successfully transfer control to ROM BIOS (indicating a motherboard failure).
The fact that the Green power LED, and Amber Battery LED are lit seems to exonerate the laptop power supply (brick) circuitry. Even with a nearly dead battery, a Toshiba Satellite 1135-s1552 should work while plugged into a properly functioning brick.
Here's Toshiba support's (244 page) online PDF version of your laptop manual:
http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/tais/support/jsp/modelContent.jsp?ct=SB&os=&category=&moid=434997&rpn=PS113U&modelFilter=1135-S1552&selCategory=2756709&selFamily=1073768663If the HDD (hard disk) activity indicator LED is active after power-on, then your system has actually got past BIOS and is booting - your LCD monitor inverter circuit or Backlight may have burned out - and to use the system, you'll need to connect an external monitor to the RGB monitor port on the back of the system (see illustration on page 32 of User's Guide) to view system activity.
Alternatively, one may attach an analog TV, using the S-Video port on the back of the laptop (see illustration on page 32 of User's Guide).
Once an external monitor is working to display the ROM BIOS part of the boot sequence, you may find that the ROM BIOS is good enough to run a few BIOS-based diagnostics. Run them all - something may indicate the source of the boot failure. Ofttimes, enough of the motherboard remains good to provide interaction with the ROM BIOS, but some motherboard failure will subvert a full boot to Windows/Linux. An example of this type of failure would be a failure of the PCMCIA bus controller, which is vital for booting a disk-resident OS, but unaccessed (except by BIOS diags) when the user interacts with BIOS. Another common failure of this type is main memory (RAM) failure.
A working external monitor/TV also provides a chance to backup important laptop data to a flash drive, sky drive, or CD-RW discs.
If no HDD activity is seen after power-up, then either your BIOS is hosed (in which case you'll need a new motherboard), or another motherboard component is hosed (in which case you'll need a new motherboard).
You may want to transplant the HDD into a working PCMCIA-bus system (any laptop) to recover/backup your important data.
If someone recently attempted and failed to update the motherboard's ROM BIOS, then you know why the system is failing to boot and also failing to light the display.
Here's a link to a site with disassembly instructions for Toshiba laptops:
http://www.irisvista.com/Most dead laptops (even those whose power supplies have been burned out by a nearby lightning strike with the system on 120 VAC power) will still have perfectly usable HDD module(s), and RAM memory cards, so that at the very least, these removable components may be recycled into memory reserves for your next laptop or sold (
Ebay.com) to help defray the cost of a new system.
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