Endless 5.0 and 5.1.1 won't boot: Toshiba Satellite C55-B5101

[Jeke]

Neither Endless 5.0 nor 5.1 nor 5.1.1 will boot up past the Toshiba log screen. Toshiba Satellite C55-B5101. I’m having trouble installing Endless OS successfully. I get stuck on the “Toshiba” screen. More detail: Many months ago I tried Endless via live USB. It worked well. So I installed Endless OS from a USB drive live OS to the internal hard drive of a Toshiba C55-B5101, which meets the requirements for Endless OS as far as I can tell. This had Windows installed. After installing Endless, Endless functioned well, and it was able to power up and down and reboot etc. We could use the apps. Then later that day, the laptop fell asleep (after a normal period of not being used…maybe 10 minutes or so…) and there was no way to wake it up. No keyboard presses woke it. Pressing the power button didn’t wake it. Nothing. So I had to shut it down by pressing and holding the power button. After that, it wouldn’t restart! It would just stay on the “Toshiba” screen when I started it up. I tried lots of approaches, including checking the BIOS settings, trying a few different settings, and reverting to the default settings, tried completely wiping the drive, and re-installing the Endless OS (many times). I even tried checking the disk with the disk utility running on the USB live OS drive. Eventually, I found some possibly bad sectors on the drive. I could never get past the “Toshiba” screen even letting it sit there like that for hours. So after many months of trying, I finally bought a brand new hard drive, to see if that would work. Maybe the bad sectors of the old hard drive were causing problems. I installed the brand new, fresh hard drive, and the first thing I did to it was install Endless OS by using the “reformat” app in the USB Live Os drive. At first it didn’t boot after install. Then I changed the BIOS setting for something like “safe boot” by disabling “safe boot” or whatever it was called. Then Endless OS worked! It installed! The apps and games worked. I could install apps. I could use them. It could power off and on and reboot etc. And then, later that day, the same thing happened as before. The laptop went to sleep (after a normal period of not being used…maybe 10 minutes or so…). And - there was no way to wake it up! And after that, just like before, it would only get to the “Toshiba” logo screen when I tried to boot it up. So I planned to reinstall the OS, and disable all sleeping/waking of the laptop using the Power Settings in the OS, thinking that I was able to install the OS and it worked until it fell asleep, so let’s make sure it won’t fall asleep again ever. So I did set it to never fall asleep, and I reinstalled the Endless OS, yes I reformatted the brand new drive. But that didn’t even work. Then I wiped the drive using the fast formatting and reinstalled the OS. That didn’t work. Then I wiped the drive using the slow way! And reinstalled the OS, and that didn’t work. I still just saw the “Toshiba” screen when I tried to boot up. I don’t know how to boot into Safe mode on this computer, and I don’t even think there is a Safe Mode available. But as far as I know, Endless should work on this computer. So then I saw that the support team had tried to fix similar bootup problems in 5.1.1. So I made a bootable 5.1.1 drive and unfortunately, that one won’t even boot. It shows the Endless logo screen, but then switches to the Toshiba logo screen, then switches to a blank screen about 30 seconds later and nothing beyond that changes. We can still use the Live USB drive 5.0 bootable version, but it is slow and I need to install the full version onto this laptop. Please tell me what I should do. I am out of ideas. Support has asked me to post this here. Thanks for your time and any suggestions.