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1namylnFlag for United States of America

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Toshiba Satellite A305-S6883 with unreliable Windows startup

I have a Toshiba Satellite A305-S6883.  The problem is after the BIOS raster, it would stop at a black screen with a steady cursor.  The machine would do nothing until turned off and then powered back on.  Sometimes it would boot others it would not.  I have made some changes and this seems to have stopped.  However I'm not certain these issues won't reoccur.  I'm looking for advice.  Thanks in advance.

I've updated the BIOS to the latest version.  Reseated the memory, battery, hard drive and optical drive.  I've removed the hard drive and scanned it for viruses/malware on a separate computer (it contained both viruses and malware).  I've tested the original hard drive for failure.  I've installed another hard drive and performed a test installation of Vista Home Premium with no problems.  

Since completing all of the above, neither with the original drive or the test drive have these issues reoccurred.
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nobus
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it can be  ab bad contact - that you fixed with all the things you did
i think it is best to test it for a couple of days, before proceeding
you never had any error message?
you said ' I have made some changes ' - which ones??
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Callandor
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@nobus, No error messages.  When I said changes I was referring to the removing and re-inserting of ram, battery, etc.  That was my fault.

@Callandor, For protection I use AVG Free and the full version of Malwarebytes.  That sound alright?

I'll continue testing the machine.  Thanks!
you can always run diags from the ubcd, if you want : http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/      
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I have that disk.  I will do so now.
run memtest86+ and the  diag from the disk manufacturer
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Will do.
post results
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Something to add to my original post.  Wireless USB Logitech mouse quite working on occasion.  Batteries were charged.
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Memory test returned no errors.  Hard drive passes integrity test.
The software protection you are using is fine.  It's kind of hard to find a problem after you fixed it (however that happened).  There's not much we can tell you, unless you have an existing problem with symptoms that point to the problem.

Does the event log have any messages?
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Thank you.  Nothing in the event viewer.
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So far so good.  I've witnessed the problem once when it first arrived for repair.  Since then its been very reliable.
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No more issues since the first time this happened in my tech shop.  My belief is it was due to the re-seating of components and/or the viruses/malware.  Thanks for your efforts.
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