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My computer is really sick please advise! I really need to use it.

 
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Please help me to diagnose my computer's sickness. It's a Toshiba S1800-921 laptop. I think somebody destroyed some of my hardware by sending me a virus. These are the messages that I'm currently getting:

1)When I switch it on it displays this message on the screen:
****Bad check sum (ROM) ****
Check system. Then press [F1] key
When I press F1 it goes to system setup
2)When I switch it on, it displays the message �Missing operating system�
3)Sometimes it displays the message �Insert system disk and press enter� when I switch it on
4)Sometimes 2 vertical white lines appear on the screen when I switch it on
5)Sometimes it hangs up in Windows, it does not respond to any other key or combination of keys. It only responds to the on/off button after I�ve pressed on it for about 10 seconds.
6)When I press the on/off button the on light appears but nothing happens after that. After about 3-5 minutes the system fan comes on and blows out really HOT air. There is nothing I can do except to turn it off.

So has anybody got any ideas. I would really appreciate it. I really need to use this computer, right now I'm using my old 486.
 
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Try taking the battery out and just running it on the power adaptor. Wild guess.
 
ernest fakudze
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Thanks for the suggestion Barry. After I'd removed the battery things looked promising for a little while until it hung up again in Windows. Anyway how did you come up with battery theory because I'm interested?
I'm taking the machine back to the dealer tomorrow since the 1 year warranty they gave me is expiring on Febraury 14th.
 
Barry Gaunt
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You wrote that you were getting some over-heating so that gave me the idea the power-supply could be defective. If the battery is going defective then there could possibly be a short-circuit. As I wrote before a wild guess. I would now get your critical data safely saved away on a different machine.
-Barry
 
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As far as the virus...It's been a looooooong time since I have seen a virus that actually affects hardware. There used to be some virus' out there that could somehow do damage to your hard drive, but like I said, I haven't seen those in a very long time.
In order for a virus to do damage to hardware it would have to probably mess with the firmware on the hardware, so it really isn't damaging the hardware itself, but the software the hardware uses to communicate.
It is good you have decided to take it in since it is still under warrenty. Laptops are harder to troubleshoot because you can't just pop opne the case and dig around and replace parts until you find out what is wrong.
From your list of problems, it could be
1. Processor (overheating)
2. Harddrive (overheating, corrupt)
3. memory (probably not though)
4. Motherboard (less likely than first 2 but more likely than 3)
So as you can see, I HAVE NO IDEA. But thought I would add my 2 cents about the virus to lessen your worries about that a little.
 
ernest fakudze
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Ok, I took it in for repairs. They replaced the motherboard and the hard drive because they did not know what was wrong with it. Now I treat it like an egg and even better than my girlfriend, my girlfriend is not allowed to touch it either. I think it will last for a long time now. Thanks to everyone who helped.
 
Don't get me started about those stupid light bulbs.
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