Toshiba A200 now hates windows 7 after several good years

My toshiba A200 laptop was upgraded from vista HP to ultimate with a clean install on new 500gb hard drive and it has worked pretty flawlessly for the past few years from the RC version. But in the past few months it has started crashing, rebooting and rebooting and rebooting, now freezing when inserting power cable [with buzzing sound] been very hard to start sometimes rebooting in a loop. Starts ok usually on battery only but erratic on cable. Not really sure what the cause is but am assuming it is updates as i have done clean install on yet another hard drive and after doing updates it starts to crash, uninstalling SP1 by restoring doesnt make a difference it is still stuffed. I have 3gb of ram.
when i put the original vista drive back in it works fine.
but want to stay with windows 7.
Toshiba says there is no Bios update past 2.5, all the drivers as far as i can ascertain are up to date. Not sure which update is causing this. the minidump doesnt work and event viewer just says there is a kernal issue and the laptop closed down unexpectedly so doesnt help much.
Any help appreciated.

Do I understand you that you are still running a Release Candidate of Windows 7? I don't keep track of such things, but August seems to be a date when some earlier versions (prior to retail releases) were discontinued. Can you confirm?

hi no i am using the 7600 build but have run out of ideas, i have pulled it apart and cleaned out the heatsink, but it still freezes.

Those power cables have some systems in them which can cause problems. I don't know if you have a transformer in line on yours, but the Dell cables can mess up if they are not working correctly.

Maybe something in Windows 7 power scheme is reacting differently to a situation than Vista did.

Did you see any errors or warnings in the Event Viewer?

If your system is actually giving you Blue Screen Crashes, you might want to visit the BSOD forum and check the sticky about submitting dump files. It also explains how to stop the continuous reboots by changing a setting by using the Control Panel - System - Advanced System settings - Startup and Recovery Settings button and remove the auto reboot check mark and set it to do small memory dumps.

If I understand correctly your laptop is exhibiting these symptoms only with a Windows 7 install that you have updated and that the same laptop "when i put the original vista drive back in it works fine" that is to say that it has absolutely none of the symptoms that you describe above, including the issue with the charging cable??
My suggestion would then be to perform a clean custom install of Windows 7 on another hard drive (that you know to be good) and instantly turn off the Windows Update Utility's ability to download driver files onto your computer;
Click the start orb and type
advanced system settings
into the search box and hit enter
Select the "Hardware" tab and then the Device Installation Settings" button.
Select the "No let me choose what to do" radio button
and then the "Never install driver software from Windows Update" radio button. Save changes and OK.
Then go here Toshiba Support - Homepage
Select your laptop and then your flavor of Windows 7 (64 or 32bit) and download and install the manufacturer's drivers for your hardware. There are 3 or 4 pages of drivers there, I would begin by first concentrating on the Chipset, Video, Audio and LAN (wired and wireless). Then check device manager for any other issues that may remain needing attention.
As far as other Windows Software Updates I would do them manually, I would probably start by downloading and installing service pack 1 and follow that with installing small batches of any remaining updates, providing an easier fall back position if problems occur, rebooting after each even if not prompted.

Thank you for the extensive replies, I have installed on new drive and only done basic updates and it all works well for a while. Toshiba unfortunately doesnt support it anymore so are not interested. The firmware is out of date but there are no further ones to download. So that is a possible problem. Even with the old vista drive installed it will freeze so that is a no go. The power supply may be flakyas it is usually a bit more stable on battery but tha only lasts about an hour and then when plugged it it freezes and buzzes or just reboots. so that may be the issue, but then at other times it all works fine for several hours. Eventually though it will crash and reboot. Maybe it is time for a new laptop. Oh as for the minidumps i have had that set up for several months but never works, and the event viewer just says that the laptop has closed unexpectedly, some of the errors pointed to video drivers for the ATI card, so the installed ones were from 2009 so I installed latest from manufacturer and still have problems. thanks again for the replies.

Download and run DriverView from Nirsoft. With the DriverView window in focus, select all (Ctrl+A) then File > Save selected Items. Save as a html file, put in a zipped folder and attach to a post.

We might be able to spot any obvious rogue drivers that won't be helping you.

thank you for that i may not be able to do it for a few days due to family issues, will try though. thanks again

I think windows7 is good,but sometimes it is a little slowly.

i have pulled the laptop to pieces as it seems like the DC jack is faulty so i am replacing that and it may help the situatuion.