GSD Crowd Source Troubleshooting Flare: Toshiba Laptop Error

HELP!

Over the past several weeks I’ve been assisting my uncle with troubleshooting a persistent issue on his laptop.

I’ve covered all the bases that I can think of so far and have arrived at the conclusion that we are facing a laptop system-board that has a failed or failing component. And that (for now) the failure appears to be non-critical.

Options I can think of for permanent repair would be system board replacement ($250 USD + labor) or upgrade to a new/used laptop platform.

But I’d really love to have some additional suggestions or thoughts from the faithful GSD readers to either correct my misdiagnosis and/or point us on the right track for additional troubleshooting.

The system is a Toshiba Satellite A215-S4757 laptop running Windows Vista.

Recently, my uncle reports that when booting, it presents the following error messages in the BIOS as it is coming up:

for the search robots

System Configuration Data updated
ERROR
Resource Conflict – PCI Serial Bus Controller in slot 01
    Bus:1A, Device:04, Function:01
ERROR
Resource Conflict – PCI Mass Storage Controller in slot 01
    Bus:1A, Device:04, Function:02
ERROR
Resource Conflict – PCI Serial Bus Controller in slot 01
    Bus:1A, Device:04, Function:03

A search on the web found more than a few instances of similar issues by Toshiba laptop users but no clear solution:

• A215-S4757 - IEEE 1394 error? resource conflict? B... - TOSHIBA FORUMS
• PCI Memory Controller and SM Bus Controller for Sa... - TOSHIBA FORUMS

The BIOS boot process can be resumed and eventually walked though to the desktop Vista loading.

Upon getting Windows loaded, Windows reports a driver issue with the “Memory Module” driver and is unsuccessful with getting one installed. My uncle reports there are also a few other device errors found in the Device Manager view but I’ve not been able to do a remote session to get them noted specifically. I think one he mentioned is for a multi flash-card reader component of the laptop.

We’ve run several memory tests (Windows and via LiveCD) that come back clean. The system has two 2GB DIMMS to bring it to max load of 4 GB. They have been reseated to no effect.

I also had him boot a Linux LiveCD that still saw the same errors during the BIOS boot but otherwise then loaded and operated OK.

The BIOS was flashed to the latest version available on the Toshiba product support page mentioned. No issues were encountered during the BIOS upgrade flash but the errors seen by the BIOS load persist.  The BIOS itself is very simple and a review of the photos he provided of the BIOS options don’t find any advanced options to fiddle with IRQ or PCI settings like the BIOS of my home-brew Shuttle-SFF system has.The settings I observed seem to be stock and normal for such a system.

The system can be booted on past the errors and seems to run “fine” otherwise once Vista loads…except for the device/driver errors that appear to be (for now) non-critical/fatal to system operation.

My uncle also may be having some other startup/autoruns issues due to previous software install issues, but I don’t think that those are related to the BIOS issue. They need to be addressed but are of a secondary level concern IMHO.

I’m pending a remote control session so I can explore his Vista device drivers some more and then assess his system hardware with the following tools to collect more information:

• SIV - System Information Viewer
• HWiNFO, HWiNFO32 & HWiNFO64 - Hardware Information, Analysis and Monitoring Tools
• PCI-Z - detect unknown PCI devices
• HWMONITOR - CPUID
• SysInspector :: Free PC Diagnostic Tool – ESET
• RWEverything - Read & Write Everything
• DriverView – Nirsoft - Loaded Windows Drivers List
• DevManView – Nirsoft - Alternative to device manager of Windows
• InstalledDriversList -  Nirsoft – View installed driver files
• Driver Booster 2 Free - IObit
• Snappy Driver Installer
• Intel® Driver Update Utility

Note: I generally don’t like grant blanket trust to driver-update helper software and prefer to find my driver downloads direct from source. However, these type of tools may be useful for doing system scans for information gathering purposes and to see the possible hardware/drivers that I need to evaluate and then decide to apply on my own. Caution: Here be dragons.

My thoughts:

Since the BIOS was flashed successfully, I don’t believe the issue is with the BIOS/firmware code.

Since the error happens during the BIOS boot load, I believe it is detecting a hardware failure with the system board components.

I’ve not found yet a Toshiba laptop mode diagnostic boot disk like those Dell offers for its systems. Is one out there to test the hardware via Toshiba OEM support tools?

Because we are seeing the core errors before the Vista OS loads, I don’t believe the Vista OS is the problem…and that the driver/device errors are a consequence of the core hardware issue seen at the BIOS boot.

Please let me know if you can recommend any additional troubleshooting or diagnostic tips I can try when we get going on our remote-connect session.

If this was at work I’d be putting in a ticket for a system-board replacement with out vendor.  However the cost of replacing the motherboard outright on a home-user’s system – and the age of the system – it may be cheaper to pick up a new laptop and move on. I’m thinking the price point is going to be very close. But then again, there may be something obvious I am overlooking.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

--Claus Valca