motherboard gone bad

Hi

I don't know much about computer hardware, but I have a toshiba laptop that I bought 2-1/2 years back. One day, I ran spybot on it to clean infections and then it looked like I lost my profile on it. I called Toshiba help support and they helped me roll it back to previous state. Then the computer worked fine for few days. One day I moved the computer and then it stopped working, windows would not start and it would not start in silent mode.

So I took it to Toshiba authorized dealer, which told me that the hard disk is about to go bad and was charging me a lot of money to fix it, I took it to another Toshiba dealer and he mentioned that hard-disk is fine only extra memory (RAM that I put it in when bought the laptop) is bad, but was charging a lot of money for databackup. So I took it to Best Buy, who backed data up for me for cheaper price. They reinstalled the OS for me, however, when I went to pick it up, it was still rebooting on its own and then would lock up in the silent mode page and windows would not come up.

I left it with them again and they told me that the extra RAM has gone bad and it works fine once the memory is out. When I went to pick up the computer, they were running hardware diagnostics on it. So I told them that I would come next week. Yesterday, when I went to pick it up, to my surprise they said that diagnostics has discovered that the mother board has failed and the computer is now no use.

My dilemma is that if the motherboard was bad, then it would not start at all (and it was starting when I went to pick it up), so it only leaves me to believe that either the motherboard got switched or failed while they were doing something with it.

Any ideas on this and what should I do now? Should I buy a new computer or try to have it fix from some reliable shop? Any help will be appreciated.

the restarting sounds like overheating, but the pause on the first screen tells me its actually a bigger problem. that problem is ram. your computer was unable to read it properly. or you have something set wrong in your bios. but im sure you already knew that. the overheating could have caused your motherboard to go out. It really depends on what part of the motherboard that fried out if its not starting. if its the actual motherboard then the light should turn orange when you turn it on (not sure if its the same for laptops) however just because the motherboard went out doesnt mean the computers no good. replace the motherboard (probably pretty expensive with a laptop) and take all your parts off your otherone (harddrive, ram,processor, whatever isnt built onto the motherboard) sorry im not an expert when it comes to laptops. re-install all onto the new motherboard and make sure your cooling fan is working properly. you might want to get a new one. hope this helps... laptops is a weakpoint of mine.

With a laptop you are better off just buying a new one.