Toshiba laptop doesn't wake up from sleep.

This is an old Toshiba laptop that I use as back-up. Two days ago I clicked on "sleep" instead of "shut down", because I knew I wasn't going to use it for a few days.

Today I get a black screen when I power it on. I tried all the usual solutions: removed battery, unplugged from both laptop and wall socket, pressed power button for 30 seconds. When I power it on, the laptop is still "sleeping" basically. I noticed only the power and battery lights are on. The hard drive light is not coming on at all.

First time I put this laptop to "sleep". So I cannot compare with any previous experience. Obviously it was a bad decision, but it borders on the absurd. This laptop was working just fine.

Could it be another culprit here? Like the CMOS battery?

Thank you all.

Paul Black said:

Hi sunsetlover, can you boot into Safe Mode?

No, it's only a black screen. I clicked power button and F8 at the same time, nothing. I also clicked Fn+F3 (toggles sleep mode), nothing.

I also noticed that the power adaptor doesn't charge the battery, no amber light. The adaptor brick is good, as I tested it on another Toshiba laptop I have. What implications this may have? There may be power management issues? or the power socket on the laptop is shot?

I also reinstalled the RAM modules, no good. Not sure if that made things worse.

SIW2 said:

Did you try boot media and see if you can coax the HD into starting up? Just opening it in explorer might do the trick.

17514x86.iso
17514x64-v10.iso

That's a good idea. I just tried it with a repair disk that I have, nothing, no hard disk activity at all.

The only lights that are on are the plugged-in and power lights. It looks like the hard disk didn't enter "sleep" mode, it entered "death" mode.

SIW2 said:

Doesn't sound good. Did you try reseating the cables to the HD? It is not an uncommon issue with laptops - especially if they are jarred in some way.

No I didn't try that, I'll try it later.

I was thinking about the CMOS battery, because I was getting the "CMOS checksum bad" error sometimes. Can this battery wreak havoc like this?

This is just a back up laptop, it has no data that I don't have on my primary laptop. But it does have my favorite OS, which is why I'm here.

Thank you all.