Problems starting up a Toughbook

Hello Everyone.

I have a Panasonic Toughbook CF27 (LBAGHEM) P3 500Mhz. This is not my gaming rig. By today’s standards, it isn’t worth very much, BUT, I use it at work, (I am a steamfitter/ welder) for drawings and such, and because of my environment, it has proved, up until now, invincible. I was last running Widows 2000 Pro on it.

Recently, it developed a problem starting up. I sometimes would have to hit F8 and use the last known good configuration, to load and start windows. The frequency of this issue increased steadily.

It developed to the point that it will no longer load at all. F8 or not. When I start it, I get a black screen, then the PANASONIC logo comes up, the message for F2 and SETUP appears below the logo, then disappears to leave the black screen with PANASONIC logo alone. That’s it.

I took several bootable CDs ( made sure that CD/A:/C: was enabled in bios, as I still have access to it) and attempted start up. By the LEDs I can tell that everything is trying. I see the HDD light flicker, then the CD light comes on, and I can hear it spinning for a little while. Then it goes out and leaves me with the same black screen with PANASONIC logo. I even tried this with 2000 Pro and XP pro install disks. Same results.

I removed my HDD and connected it ( through adapters) to my desktop. I retrieved all files that are of importance to me, then I used McAffee to shred the disk, I formatted this, then reinstalled it in the toughbook, with the intent of reinstalling windows. Same results.

I once again removed the HDD, installed it into a borrowed laptop. Re formatted it and did a complete XP Pro install. Played with some programs, everything worked AOK. As far as I can tell, and using scan disk, this HDD is working just fine.

I reinstalled it back into the toughbook, and still have all of the same results posted above. I have begun to search for a new used motherboard.

I may come off as being knowledgeable of computers, but I am NOT. Please tell me if I am barking up the wrong tree by assuming the mobo has given out. Let me know if I am missing something.

Thank you so much for your time and effort,
Kenny

It might be as simple as a bad CMOS/BIOS battery. You could try resetting the BIOS settings to factory defaults, then changing them to whatever is correct for your system. If you can't get into the BIOS when booting, you might look into a CMOS/BIOS battery replacement.

I do have access to my setup, it is password protected, but I know it, can enter make changes and exit. Then the laptop goes right through the stages above. The fact that I can do this, means batt is OK??

If the changes are saved properly, then the battery is probably OK. A reset to defaults , save, then changing back to current settings and save might still be worthwhile though.