Intermittent boot problem with Toshiba Portege 3500

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

Hi,

I have a problem with my Portege 3500. Occasionally when I try to
start it up, it gets to the "in touch with tomorrow" screen, but no
further. This is exactly the behaviour you would get if you took the
HDD out completely. Powering it off and on again just leaves it in the
same state. If I wait until the Intel boot loader error message comes
up (indicating that the disk cannot be found), I can press F1 to get
into the BIOS - this reflects the fact that the HDD has not been
detected.

However (and fortunately) if left off for 24 hours, it miraculously
recovers and boots up with no problems.

This problem only occurs very infrequently (perhaps once a month), and
typically after a session of pretty heavy use. Perhaps it is due to
overheating - however, the problem tends to manifest itself when
trying to power on the following day (after everything has cooled back
down).

So, my questions are:
* any idea what is going on here? What can be getting reset after 24
hours (if I try before this, I just get the ITWT screen, and have to
wait ANOTHER 24 hours)
* is there any way I can get it to boot up without waiting 24 hours
(have tried holding the power button down for 5-10 secs to force a
reboot, but this doesn't help)?
* once I do get in, will flashing the BIOS help, or is it more likely
to be a HDD problem (I've heard that there were problems with joint
solders?)

Any help would be appreciated - it's driving me mad!

Thanks,
Matthew