Hey Germanio,

I'm so sorry, we've been focussing on this CD player for so long, I completely lost track of what we started with. LOL.

I've consulted with one of our techs on this. I beleive that we have found a fix, but he wants to do a test first on a Toshiba he has at his office. He will be walking you through the next part, assuming that the tests he does are successfull.

Keep an eye out for his post.

TTFN

LGW

Cool, thanks

Hey germanio,

LGW actually found this solution and appears to be quite popular. I've confirmed that this solution is safe and does actually work! However, you will need a soldering iron and a tiny bit of solder, or know somebody who can do this for you. You could probably do this with a some kitching foil and tape, but I do recommend solder for good contact.

The solution is to remove the IDE cable that plugs in from the CD-ROM to the main board on the laptop. There is normally 1 screw holding this plug in place on the motherboard side. Once removed, you will need to locate pins 45 and 47, and bridge (solder) the two together. pin 1 will help you locate 45 and 47, which will be the pin on the left hand side of the socket with an arrow pointing towards it. The pins across the top will count up in multiples of 2 (1, 3, 5, 7, 9 e.t.c). Domonstrated in the attached image.

Attached Images

pin4547.jpg (50.4 KB, 11 views)

Hi,
Thanks for that. Unfortunately i have no idea what soldering is. I will check it out and see what i can do. In the mean time though, i'm going skiing for a week , so I may not be able to get back to ye for a whileen.
Ger

Hey everyone!

I'm back at long last! Sorry about delay.

Ripped laptop apart today in search of the IDE cable you were on about madmonkey, and I think I found it, unscrewed it but couldn't get it off the motherboard. Just to clarify, its not the back of the cd drive itself I'm looking for, but the thing it attaches to on the motherboard, am I right? If so, it wouldn't budge, and I didn't see any pins like the ones in the pic.

I was however messing around in BIOS again. Even though USB isn't mentioned in the boot order thing, and FDD is, on the second page, it says USB FDD legacy emulation. Does that mean I could boot from a floppy usb? I know it probably doesn't but I just want to make sure

Ger

Hey Germanio!!! Welcome Back!!!

I was just thinking about you the other day M8! Glad to hear that you hadn't gotten lost in the world.

Just to check, did you remove the screw that is holding that cable in to the motherboard?

It should be on the underside of the cable.

If you absolutely cannot get the cable off, the USB FDD legacy, may be the trick. You will need a boot disk from Bootdisk.com. If you set the boot order to boot from the USB FDD legacy first, make sure you have your USB Floppy drive in place, with the bootdisk in it, and reboot the machine.

Looking forward to your reply,

TTFN

LGW