Toshiba Satellite 5000 USB not working & BIOS issues

One client brought in his Toshiba Satellite 5000 notebook because his USB ports were not working. After updating some unknown Windows drivers that turned out to be drivers for the SDCard we focused our efforts on the BIOS. Unfortunately it turns out that the Satellite 5000 doesn't have a standard BIOS. The BIOS on the Satellite 5000 is accessed through a program called HWSetup.exe on Windows. We figured that the USB might be disabled in the BIOS since all the drivers looked fine in Windows.

The next problem was that the client had installed a non-original version of Windows XP on his Toshiba notebook, which meant that the utility wasn't present. We scoured toshiba.ca to no avail., only finding the utility on toshiba.com. When we ran the Toshiba Utilities installer which installs the HWSetup.exe file along with a few other tools we got an error message about another Toshiba Common Files utility which wasn't installed. More searching on Toshiba.

The point here is keep your original CD and if your notebook is new make sure you make any Windows restore utilities as per the documentation before starting to use your notebook. In the long run it will save you a lot of time and expense.

Comments

Canon BJ-30 Bubble Jet Printer

A few days ago we received a Canon BJ-30 Bubble jet printer as part of a group of printer donations. We tested this tiny printer which measures about 1 foot wide by 1/2 foot long when the lid is closed. Amazingly the donated printer still contained ink. Sadly it seems that Canon has discontinued making any drivers or information for Windows available on their web site. We tested the printer under Ubuntu Linux version 10.04 and it printed a test page flawlessly (we even got a full tank of ink). I called our favourite ink re-filler and found that the do indeed still carry the cartridges for this portable printer. We looked around for information about the BJ-30 and discovered that this tiny printer is 720dpi x 360 dpi, although we suspect that number is a software-interpolation number that depends on a Windows driver. As anyone can see from our screen shot above the printer seems to print just fine. The biggest downside to the printer we felt was the lack of a USB port, and the...

Inspiring Electronics Labs

Inspiring Electronics Labs Our focus at The Working Centre's Computer Recycling program has been on building and repairing systems for low income earners in the Kitchener / Waterloo region, but one of the side projects some of our volunteers wanted to branch into was electronics. It started when I replaced our aging soldering iron with a finer (hotter) soldering pencil, and some flux. We moved the soldering station out to the component testing station where we have motherboards mounted on to the wall for testing components like video cards, memory, etc. (I'll post photos in another post) To help inspire new ideas for the lab I googled Electronics Lab images and came up with the following labs: This lab desk isn't very advanced organizational-wise, but it has a number of important components we're missing, including a good oscilloscope. Image from the Arizona State University Power Electronics lab . I'm not usually fond of this tan coloured wood, but it seems to wor...

CR Most Wanted List

The other day I met with other members of our organization's IT crew and it occurred to me that Computer Recycling was short on some items that might seem plentiful in today's environment. Our most wanted list goes something like this: Clean USB Keyboards Clean USB Mice SDRAM and DDR-SDRAM in 128, 256, and 512MB configurations Hard drives 10GB and larger An oscilloscope for the shop HP Laserjet 2100 and 2300 printers Working speakers with all parts If you have any of these items available in the Kitchener/Waterloo area please contact us as per the link below: http://www.theworkingcentre.org/at/comp_recycling/comp_recycling.html

Used Technology

Search This Blog