Display issues on Satellite M70

I am using Satellite M 70 notebook, purchased about more than one year back and really like it ( Pentium M70, 512MB Ram, 40 GB HD). So far it has been without major issues.
The only problem now I face is that some times the screen for a second or a fraction of second. It happens randomly, once or twice in a day and the flutter is more prmonant in lower part of screen. Seems a minor issue but it irritates me as I think it is too early for a laptop to show such an issue and it might progress with time. What u thinks of it? Is it an issue with the graphics chip (it has Mobile Intel 915 GM), Motherboard or any other hardware? Does not seem to be a software issue to me.
BTW I have seen such flutter in two other non Toshiba laptops with my friends but in their case it was more frequent and very prominent and all the screen will flutter and shake for a second/ or a fraction of a second, a very, very unpleasant feeling.
My problem is that I can not even show it to a tech as I do not know how I can reproduce this flutter to show him, it happens randomly and infrequently.
I will like to tell about two other minor issues with M70 as well:
I have set in Power Settings, the screen to be turned off after 5 minutes and laptop to be standby after 10 minutes. When screen is turned off and laptop is still not gone into standby mode, the normal behavior for the screen is to become ON if u touch the Touch Pad (or move the mouse). I noted that sometimes, the screen will not become ON even on touching the mouse pad, it totally fails to do so. Obviously I can not access the windows to logoff/ reboot at that time as screen is OFF. Then I will just close the lid (that puts laptop in hibernation) and reopen to make it ON again, the screen will become ON this time. I do not do power reset to prevent my current data loss at that time.
I have noted this issue from the very beginning after I purchased it. It happens rarely though (once/ twice in a month). Any one noticed such issue?
Another issue that also happens infrequently (once in a month or so): Sometimes while working with laptop, all of a sudden laptops screen will become lemon green, light blue (not BSOD) or pearly white or some other color like that. Again obviously I can not access the windows to logoff/ reboot at that time so I will just close the lid (that puts laptop in hibernation) and then reopen the lid to make laptop ON again; the screen will usually become Ok this time. I avoid power reset here also to prevent my current data loss at that time.
This issue has been there also since from the very beginning.
All these observations make me think that there is some problem with my Toshiba from day 1, probably the graphics? What do u think and advice about it?
Really I will be reluctant to buy a Toshiba next time due to these issues.

Hello aiglehawk
I have read your posting very carefully because I have Satellite M70-159 amost a year now and it is always very interesting to see what other M70 owners report about this notebook model.
Unfortunately here in forum is not possible to give you any precise diagnostic but I just want to write my comment about your posting. Maybe sounds strange but I will start with your latest sentence:
> Really I will be reluctant to buy a Toshiba next time due to these issues.
In my opinion this sentence is absolutely superfluous and I am pretty sure you will write the same if you have had any other non-Toshiba notebook. I can understand you but you know very well that if BMW produce 100 cars it can always happen that 5 of them have some fault.
Believe me my Satellite M70 is almost permanent on (day and night). I have get it from company where I work and I do not care about it at all. It runs and runs. I have tested all stuff you wrote in your posting and it works perfect. All power saver settings I have changed many times and I have never noticed something similar.
Yes you are right about service. I believe that you can not reproduce this but I am sure that you know very well that technician have different diagnostic tools for hardware checking. Using those tools they can find out if some hardware component is defective or not.
Because of that I recommend you to contact service. Let them check your notebook. Is the warranty still valid?
At the end I will also say that I like my M70 and I am very happy to have it. But as next notebook I would like to have some monster notebook like Qosmio.
Good luck my friend and please let me know about service results.

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Ati2dvag issue on Satellite M70 - blue screen error

Hello im hoping some one can help me with these problems that i have. Well from one day to start my computer I no longer start it in normal, and have to use safe mode, the computer changes the display on its own and it goes down to 16 bit colours,when i restart my computer hanging unless I boot it as safe mode and then other times i get the black screen saying that i can choose form safe mode etc. When i load up form safe mode it starts straight away and then i restart to go back into normal mode it hanging at black screen, but if i dont go into safe mode it takes ages to boot up.The blue screen that comes up says the following......
The device driver got stuck in a infinate loop. This usually indicates problems with the device itself or with the device driver programming the hardware incorrectly.
Please check with your hardware device vendor for any driver updates.
STOP:0x000000EA (0x86605C38,0x866563B0,0xF7CA2CB4,0x00000001)
ati2dvag
Beginning dump of physical memory.
Physical memory dump complete.
My laptop is Satellite M70, XP Home SP2. Video card is ATI X700.
I tried uninstalling Display driver, no help. I even tried formating HDD and reinstalled XP home with recovery by recovery DVD, even worse, I cannot even finish recovery process, it is always hanging when Start Windows, then same blue screen... Plus as soon as load windows xp, the display has very low resolution with many vertical lines evenly spread on screen...

Unfortunately, I think you have to return your notebook to the service point.
> The device driver got stuck in a infinite loop
For me it sounds like a corrupt graphic card.
I think there is no much to do and you have to ask for the technician help.

Serious Keyboard issue on Satellite M70-267

The Keyboard Lanaguage Is United Kingdom. The keyboard is seriously messed up and I can't figure out why.
I can press any letter / number and it will give me something totally different, like for instance when i press space bar the screen resolution appears the whole keyboard is seriously messed up.
I have only had this pc for a week and it is brand new its a M70-267.
If anyone can help me resolve this issue that would be great.
thanks scott

Hi
You have suggested that this notebook is brand new. In this case you warranty should cover all replacements. In my opinion you should check if the new OS installation will solve this issue.
But if it doesnt work so you should contact the Toshiba service.

Satellite M70-CLI - Can't install display driver or SM Bus Controller

Hello,
I have a Satellite M70-cli PSM73C-CL100E and I got a new hard drive and loaded Windows xp. I went to the Toshiba website and downloaded and installed all of the drivers. I didn't have any problems with the atheros wifi drivers, or sound, modem or chipset. I also updated the bios to v2.10 all with success.
The problem is with the video card. I used the program from huntersoft and know that the chipset is an ATI. Also it said its a ATIradeon xpress 200m with 128MB DDR shared video. When I try and install the ATI driver it says setup was unable to complete the installation. Try to setup your display adapter with a standard vga driver.
I have spent hours pouring over the net. I have tried the ATI L30 XP driver and it does the same thing. I have tried the ATI radeon xpress 200m driver and it says hardware not found. I don't have the original CD's. I know that it works as the old drive worked fine. Unfortunatly I wiped it as well to put in an older laptop. I should have got the drivers off of it. :(
Does any one have any idea? This is driving me crazy! Thanks for any help. Marilyn

I guess I should have been more specific.
I always install the chipset first and then the display driver.
I did only use the toshiba driver. If you read the post I said that it comes up with an error message that setup was unable to complete the installation and try to setup you display adapter with a standard vga driver.
I did install sp3 first before the drivers. I also updated the bios ( after I had trouble). I tried 3 times with the toshiba driver and then tried the ati xpress 200m.
The installation on that driver halts with a no video hardware found for this driver.
The only thing I can think of is that somehow the video card has become damaged. It doesn't make sense as it was working perftecly before the hard drive upgrade.
I am trying to get this laptop ready for a donation. I volunteer as a tech for a computer company.
We donate laptops and computers to people in need of help looking for jobs,ect.
Thanks for any help. Worse case senario is that I give them the laptop any way. It still works, just not that great of display.
Marilyn

Satellite M70: When is the next ATI notebook display driver being released?

Hi,
I own a Toshiba Satellite M70 (PSM71) notebook with the ATI X700 gfx card installed. I am a developer and used to use the jMonkeyEngine with windows XP no problem. Since upgrading to Vista I receive an error when trying to run jME applications. The bug has been fixed in the latest ATI drivers, however I notice Toshiba's latest drivers are dated 30th March 2007.
When are the latest ATi drivers going to be available for Toshiba notebooks?
Thanks,
d418rf

I dont know how often Toshiba releases the own drivers but I have noticed that many notebooks series supports the same hardware devices. So many notebooks are delivered with the same GPU.
Its always advisable to check the graphic drivers from another notebook series which were delivered with the same graphic card.
However, you should know that the Vista graphic drivers are very rare due to the new DirectX10. And to be honest the GPU driver from 30th March 2007 which was designed especially for the notebooks usage is not really old.
Please understand that notebooks GPU drivers are a little bit modified. Due to the strong GPU performance the temperature goes up. This could leads to some overheating problems. The notebooks GPU drivers control the graphic card performance and if necessary the driver decreases the performance to decrease the temperature.

Black Screen on boot- Toshiba Satellite M70

Dear all,
I have Toshiba Satellite M70, I need help and i will describe my problem:
- Few days ago my screen went black suddenly, i don't know how cause i was away from the laptop.
- Until yesterday, when i boot my laptop, it gives me black screen all the time but when i put him in standby mode by closing the notebook for few seconds and then i click the on button, my screen starts displaying fine until my next reboot and i start all over again ( i usually keep my notebook working almost 18 hours which means there's a lot of time to my next reboot)
- But Today, I booted too many times , it gives me black screen and the standby mode doesn't work anymore. But few times today when i was trying to boot, the screen displayed the Toshiba screen for only 1 second then gone black again.
P.S. You can see hardly threw the black screen everything if there is a sunlight facing the laptop.
Thank you in advance,
Best regards,
Mr. Mher Krikorian

> You can see hardly threw the black screen everything if there is a sunlight facing the laptop
This is very useful info
I think the issue is related to the FL inverter
The FL-inverter is a small part which controls the display backlight.
If this part starts to malfunction then you would see everything like behind a thick fog
In my opinion the FL inverter should be checked and replaced if necessary
For that you have to get in contact with an local service technician
Greets & happy new year!

Sometimes Blue screen appears on Satellite M70

Hi there
I must express my overwhelming frustration with my satellite M70 laptop as I have it for more than a year now(warranty expired) and almost from the get go it had a problem in wich a blue screen appeared and the pc reboots...from the error report it is a problem with the graphics card and/or display driver.
I did take it to my local retailer for repair but the problem still remains(gone there 3 TIMES! each time waiting for more than a month for repair!and they did send it to toshiba service...)... as the problem doesnt happen *all the time* it seems they just didnt notice or something :(.
I did update all the drivers but it had no effect on the problem...
So now what?? Do I send it to repair and they finally replace the graphics card...but I pay??!!
This is all very upsetting for me as you might imagine...
And know its worse...it seems to be happening more and more...and many times the computer wont reboot after the bluescreen...it just stays black.
Now almost every time i turn it on it wont boot...the fan will just work for a few seconds and thats it.
Im almost certain the graphics card is defective...can I replace it at home? Argh this just feels wrong, the computer had this problem almost from the start and I sent it for repair...they just did not fix it...I shouldnt have to pay to fix it as I sent it for repair 3 times while it still had the warranty...
Please reply I'm desesperate and have no idea what to do

Hi Andrej and thanks for the reply
But the thing is I have already done that countless times...and the problem is still there...same old same old :(
I have tried seemingly everything...thats why I say its gotta be hardware :S
Having this in mind Id like to know if there is anything I can do(concerning hardware) without resorting to Toshiba service
Keep in mind that Im pretty sure it is the graphics card that is faulty(I dont know if its onboard or not)
Also sometimes when I turn it on the graphics on my pc go weird like an abstract painting or something lol...thats another reason to think its the graphics card.
So anyone can help me?
Thanks in advance for your replies :D

Satellite M70-340: screen went completely blue or black

Hi everyone,
I just bougth a Satellite M70-340 notebook and twice tonight the display went into a single color (once black, once blue) and though I still could hear the windows working (I could hear the Windows alert sounds and MSN message alerts), the screen went completely blue or black. I guess the error stems from a display driver problem so I downloaded the latest Intel driver found on this site. I am not sure if it will work.
My question is, did this happen to any of you? How did you fix it? And although I have an Intel Graphics Media Accelerator Driver for Mobile, could I install the ATI driver on this website? (I would prefer ATI driver since it is more up-to-date.)
Thanks all for your concern,
Best regards.

First of all thanks for the advice.
I downloaded the Intel driver found on the website but it turned out that, it is the version already installed in my notebook. So I don't think much has changed in my computer, now that I have installed the Intel driver again.
It has been only 3 days since I bought my notebook and I only installed a few softwares so I don't think it is in a condition much different from factory settings :( Therefore I am not sure if resetting my computer to factory setting would do.
Does anyone know if I could possibly use ATI display driver for my notebook? (It has Intel Media Accelerator Driver or something like that)
Thanks all for your concern,
best regards.

Blue Screen of Death and no XP CDs - Satellite M70

Hi.
I've got a Toshiba Satellite M70 that displays the Blue Screen of Death directly upon startup. It reads an error of 0x000000ED stating an unmountable error as the specific problem.
Unfortunately, I've no Windows XP CD to restore my computer. I do have the Toshiba Product Recovery CD, but that seems like it will simply format my computer, and I have important data I absolutely do not want to delete from my hard drive.
I cannot start in safe mode; Blue Screen of Death appears straightaway upon startup. If I try to get int through F8, Advanced Options appear but after selecting system restore it goes back to BSOD. I've also tried burning an ISO file for recovery, and the computer went into Windows Setup but hangs on "Setup is starting Windows".
Any idea what the trouble could be? And how can I fix this problem without deleting any info on my computer?
Thx.

The best option would be to remove the HDD and connect it to another PC using a USB 2.5" HDD Adapter. The HDD will appear as another Drive letter (E: for example) and you will be able to copy your data. Then you put the HDD back in and run Recovery.
If its simply a File System corruption problem, you could try running CHKDSK /F to fix it. You will need a retail version of the XP CD to do a CHKDSK from the Repair Console. Or you can create a Live Bootable XP CD which loads XP directly off a CD (Google BartPE) and run CHKDSK.
Otherwise the HDD may have bad sectors. You can use the Advanced test in Hitachi DFT to check the surface. But you should back up your data first, the HDD could get worse if you stress it out.

Satellite M70-WiFi connection just with WEP or WPA

Hi,
I have the Satellite M70-164 with an Intel PRO set wifi adapter 2200BG with the latest driver.
My problem is that I can only connect to networks with security (with WEP or WPA), when I try to connect to "open" wifi networks the computer never establishes the conection, it says is "waiting for the network".
Any help will be appreciated.
Pedro

Hello Pedro
Try to use Restore Factory Default on your router settings and try again. I use WLAN for a long time and I have never heard about something similar but with Intel 2200 BG wireless card everything is possible. I have read many different topics about different issues with this card.
Bye

Satellite M70-190 - problem with USB

Hi!
After uninstall Windows XP and BIOS update, i have a problem with USB ports. My USB flash drive does't work. Windows find it as USB flash drive, but i can't find it in "My computer"
So have anyone idea about this problem?
PS External HDD works perfect, as USB mouse, and USB WiMax modem.
Im hoping someone out there can help with this problem.

Is described issue the same on all USB ports?
I mean, I have Satellite M70-159 in front of me and since long time I use 8GB SanDisc and 2GB Toshiba USB stick and both devices are recognized properly.
I still use original Toshiba WXP installation (updated of course).

Satellite M70: Battery doesn't work anymore

The battery of my brand new satellite M70 doesn't work anymore. I didn't use the portable for about a week and when I tried to start it (from battery), it didn't do anything. The battery was still loaded (63%) I have to connect the AC adapter to the power supply to make it work.
Meanwhile the battery LED is always orange. The battery doesn't load, battery power remains 63%. I tried to remove the battery for a while and put it back in, but this didn't change anything...
How can I solve this problem?

Hi
Possibly the battery has a malfunction. It would be very interesting to know if this issue happens after battery replacing.
According to your posting the warranty should be valid the battery replacement should be done for free.
I recommend contacting the Toshiba service partner in your country and ask the guys for the help.

Satellite M70-173: spontaneous reboots

I've got an M70-173 that reboots spontaneously. It's running XP Home SP3 and has all current updates applied.
The reboots are more frequent at some times than others but the only clue I have as to the cause is that they seem to be most frequent when I have wireless networking turned on.
I realise that that's lot a lot to go on, but has anyone any thoughts on what might be happening?
TIA

I have Satellite M70-159 almost two years now and it runs like on first day. No reboots and some strange issues. I still use SP2 and do not want to install SP3. After reading some comments here I do not want to have some problems with well running OS.
What happen exactly? Does your notebook switch itself OFF and you must start it again or notebook reboots like after choosing restart option?
Is there some message or something? Maybe some application that runs in background is responsible for that.
If possible install your notebook with recovery image and check if the problem occurs again. Sorry but it is not possible to say for sure why this happen. We can just speculate here. Every of us has own OS configuration and use some favorite applications, freeware and shareware applications. Many of them are not so good and everything is possible.

Satellite M70 replacement DVD drive advice needed

Hi
The Mat****a US-841s DVD drive in my M70 has expired.
I would like to replace it with a Sony Optiarc, but I notice it says operating system Vista and I've got XP Home.
I have spent hours researching this and I can't find a drive that's compatible, can anyone tell me if the Sony is ok or recommend a suitable alternative?
I don't want to fork out money and then have lots issues I just want it to work straight out of the box although minor fiddling isn't a problem..
Any advice greatly appreciated.

Hey Andy,
I dont know if the other drive that you mean will working in your Satellite M70 but I would recommend checking the user manual of your notebook. There you can find a list of compatible drives they are pretested. You should find this information on the first pages I think.
Check this!!!
The point is that not all drives are compatible with all notebooks so you should buy a pretested drive.

Battery of Satellite M70-340 not charging

I had a problem with a Toshiba Satellite M70 - 340 laptop harddisk, but everything else was working perfectly, and it was possible to run it on battery. So i sent it to a maintanance shop where they changed the hardisk and installed a new fresh copy of Windows XP. After i received it back i found that I'm not able to turn it on except when it is plugged to the electricity, and after a bit or looking around I discovered that the battery is not charging.
In addition to that, when i first plug the laptop to the electricity while it is turned off, the battery yellow/orange LED turns on only for like 3 seconds. And while it is turned on, the LED is always off, and the battery icon on the tray states that the laptop is running on AC, and does not say that battery is charging, it keeps saying 1% remaining.
I have also tried leaving it plugged to AC while it is turned off, hoping it might recharge, but i bite the dust.
So what would cause the battery not to charge if between a day and another (and just by changing the HDD and installing a new copy of windows XP) the battery stopped working?
And I was just wondering, does a BIOS update or a hardware driver fix this? I mean does a battery need some sort of driver or software to function?
Thank you

Hello Zaher
I have Satellite M70-159 and described issue is not known to me. If you are 100% sure that this strange issue started after you get it back from the service I recommend you to talk with technicians again.
Described behavior is not definitely normal. As far as I know BIOS update or drivers have no influence on it and for me it sounds as hardware malfunction.
BTW: remove the battery, connect notebook to AC adaptor and start the notebook. When OS starts properly wait few minutes and put the battery into the notebook. Please post us what happen when you do this.

Display issues on Satellite M70

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