Have a customer tell me she 'opened an email from her aunt, a large skull and crossbones appeared on the screen, the computer shut off and won't come back on'. Sounded like a scene from Hackers to me.
Anyway, after a lot of research and swapping parts I've pretty much came to the conclusion that she had a bad BIOS flash. Apparently this was somewhat of a big deal awhile back for the Satellites and a lot of people were having issues with it.
The symptoms are that the computer receives power and turns on while the screen stays black and unresponsive. No POST, no beeps, nothing. The fan continually speeds up and slows down. The first three indicator lights (AC plugged in, laptop powered up, and battery light) all three light up as normal. While the hard drive is in, its indicator light flashes as normal. However, nothing else happens. I've reseated and swapped RAM modules, I've disconnected all extra peripherals, I've pulled the CMOS battery, I've swapped the hard drive, I've pulled all power sources and held the power button for 30+ sec. The only thing that I haven't tried yet which I'm not even sure would help would be to reflow the GPU chip.. regardless I've tried about everything else practical that I could think of.
So after trying to figure out how to blind flash the BIOS, the closest thing to help I could find online was http://forums.toshiba.com/t5/System../dead-satellite-after-bios-update/td-p/103870 and http://forum.notebookreview.com/toshiba/469337-toshiba-satellite-a350-bios-recovery-phoenix.html which basically outline the same procedure.
I have yet to get this to work with a USB flash drive or a Micro SD card usb reader with the file systems formatted to FAT and the storage space being 2GB or less.
One thing that I'm not sure about with this laptop model is how exactly force it to boot from USB or floppy. I know some models are FN+B or FN+F or WIN+F or just U or whatever but I can't find any concrete advice on how exactly to do it on this model.
So with all the backstory, the questions I have that I hope some might have an answer for here or at least point me in the right direction is:
1. What is the correct key combination to force this particular laptop to boot from the USB when you can see the screen.
2. I've downloaded the latest BIOS update from the Toshiba website for this model, but all the instructions I've read say to look for a .rom or .wph file to rename. All I can find in the downloaded container files are .fd files which I'm not sure would work the same.
3. If all else fails, would an EEPROM programmer work to flash the correct BIOS?
4. I know I could just inform the customer they need to purchase a new motherboard, but I like the challenge and the customer is actually a friend of mine so the waiting part isn't of concern.
Thanks in advance for all your advice and help!