Toshiba Portege R500 Troubleshooting

The laptop will not turn on

Make sure that the power cable is plugged into a working electrical outlet and that the power cable is not frayed or otherwise broken. If it is you may need to purchase a new power cord

If the laptop will not turn on and you have plugged it in with the power cord, try removing the battery and then plugging in the power cord. If this works, the battery has died and you will need to replace it. You can follow this guide to replace the battery.

If this error is occurring your hard drive may need to be replaced.

If you have followed the above steps and none have worked then the motherboard has failed and you may need to replace it. This should be a last resort for any problem.

If your computer is slow to load and access files, or is not turning on, you may have hard drive issues

Check to make sure that you have not opened too many background programs or opened the same program several times. If too many programs are open your computer can be slowed substantially. Try closing any excess programs that are running.

This may not be a hard drive issue but instead an issue with third party software. Restart your computer in clean mode and then try to open your documents. To do this you can go to the microsoft support page for this issue.

Your hard drive may be fragmented and you need to go to system tools and run the disk defragmenter. If you do this and there is no change then you may need to replace the hard drive.

You cannot connect to Wi-Fi with your laptop

Go to your laptop settings and make sure that Wi-Fi is turned on, and make sure that the slider located on the right side of the laptop is in the on position.

If the Wi-Fi still will not connect and you have recently installed updates for windows, try uninstalling these, especially any that edited any of your systems drivers and reinstall your wireless adapter driver to the laptop. You may consider changing all future windows updates to manual so that you can pick and choose what updates to allow onto the computer, not choosing any that affect your hardware drivers.

If none of the above steps work the Wi-Fi card in your laptop is most likely broken. In this case you will need to install a new Wi-Fi card into your computer. You can use this guide on replacing a new Wi-Fi card.

The laptop gets very hot, even when it is on a flat surface with the air vent unblocked

On the left hand side of the laptop you will find a rectangular air vent. Make sure that this is not obstructed or very dirty. If it is dirty try using a can of compressed air to clear out the vent.

If you cannot hear the fan running at all or the fan is making abnormal noises it is likely the fan is broken. If this is the case then you will need to replace the fan. You can follow this guide on replacing the cooling fan.

Your driver will not play any CD or DVD, or your laptop is not reading it

If you can hear the drive turning then windows may not recognize your drive. Follow the steps on the microsoft support page to fix this problem.

If the above step does not solve your problem the CD/DVD drive may be broken and you will need to replace it. You can follow this guide on replacing the CD/DVD drive.

"The audio in your laptop will not play through your headphones, or plays through both headphones and speakers at the same time"

Make sure that you have the latest audio drivers from Toshiba and that you do not need any updates in your audio.

If the laptop does not recognize that any headphones are in and continues to play through the speakers then your audio/usb port may be broken. You can follow this guide on replacing the audio/usb port.