Fixing a Toshiba A70 with Sudden Shut Down (In Vancouver)

I traded in this Toshiba A70 laptop on 16May2013. The owner told me that it was just missing the power adapter.

When I returned home, I used a universal power adapter to run the laptop. It started up but shut down suddenly in a few minutes. It had overheat problem.

Besides buying a power adapter, I needed to disassemble the laptop and cleaned up the laptop fans which must be clogged up with dust.

To clear the hard drive, I ran the Toshiba A70 recovery disk which is Windows XP SP1. When I checked the device, there was a Ethernet device missing drver. Wireless was not working. I connected it to internet by cable and continued to upgrade the OS to SP3 and installed IE 8 so that I could browse for drivers.

I went to Toshiba websites. Only UK website has archived drivers. However, it did not work. I removed the cover on wireless card and found the model no. which is Atheros AR5212A 00. Based on the model no., I located a driver 77wc39ww.exe from Lenovo site which uses the same wireless card for Thinkpad G40, R40, R50, T40, X31 and X41. I downloaded this driver and from Device Manager, I installed it to this laptop. It installed successfully and the Wireless Network Connection icon appeared on the Windows task bar. I entered my network key and connected to Internet successfully. I ran YouTube and tested the display and sound. Both are working properly.

For safety reason, I bought a genuine Toshiba power adapter according to specification. I aso tested the battery. When it was fully charged, it ran for an hour before the laptop shut down.

To ensure overhead is fixed, I downloaded a hardware monitor. After running an hour of YouTube video, the temperature rose from 30°C to 37°C. It does not shut down suddenly anymore. It is ready to serve again.

On 2Oct2013, it was picked by a young lady in Vancouver.