Computer Help - suggestions needed

DZwart

DZwart

Legacy of Elijah Officer
I have a laptop that has not been functioning for a couple months now. I've monkeyed with it a bit, but have not been able to fix it. Here's the situation.

The laptop was running fine one afternoon, my wife was using it without a problem. It is set to go to hibernate when the lid is closed and she closed the lid and put it away in the bag and brought it home. Later that evening, I opened the laptop up to use it and the lights came on for boot-up, the fan came on, then the fan turned off and all but the power light turned off. Holding the power button is the only way to power it down.

Usually when I try to turn it on now it does the same thing, lights, fan, fan off, nothing.

Every once in a while it will give me a start up BIOS splash screen and get part way through boot up before screen, fan and lights off to the power light only non-function mode.

Does anybody have any suggestion of anything to try? I really don't want to bring it in to the shop to have someone look at it. It's about 2.5 years old and out of warranty, but not so out of date that I think it's garbage. Even if it is nearly DOA, I'd still like to get it running long enough to back up the hard drive on CD's.
 
Always disable hibernation. ALWAYS. It probably didn't go into hibernation properly, as is very common when a pc tries to hibernate. And as such was still running at full and it overheated in the bag. The motherboard is probably about shot.

Hibernation is an awfully implemented function in windows notebooks. More often than not it doesn't work properly and stuff like this happens. Sounds to me like it's toast.

If you wanna get your docs back I would suggest taking the HD out and getting an adapter and plunging it in to your desktop and grabbing them that way. That is of course assuming the HD didn't overheat as well.

Sorry to say but my diagnosis is it's probably toast, but I can't really be sure as I can't examine it myself.

Just remember to always shut down, never hibernate or sleep and make sure it has fully shutdown before you put it away in your bag.
 
Dauntless said:
Always disable hibernation. ALWAYS. It probably didn't go into hibernation properly, as is very common when a pc tries to hibernate. And as such was still running at full and it overheated in the bag. The motherboard is probably about shot.

Hibernation is an awfully implemented function in windows notebooks. More often than not it doesn't work properly and stuff like this happens. Sounds to me like it's toast.

If you wanna get your docs back I would suggest taking the HD out and getting an adapter and plunging it in to your desktop and grabbing them that way. That is of course assuming the HD didn't overheat as well.

Sorry to say but my diagnosis is it's probably toast, but I can't really be sure as I can't examine it myself.

Just remember to always shut down, never hibernate or sleep and make sure it has fully shutdown before you put it away in your bag.
Click to expand...
i have to totally disagree with you on hibernation. Besides..you should NEVER put a laptop into its bag without verifying it has powered off. I have seen plenty of laptops attempt standby and even a shutdown and hang. This is not endemic to windows Nt based systems. Back in the 9x days(95-ME( hibernate blew..but for the NT based OSes it's worked very well. If hibernate hangs..it's almost always a third party non-signed driver or app in the background and not a windows problem. As a matter of fact i have more success with laptops and hibernate than desktops..simply because laptops are designed for that behavior.

It sounds like something i the laptop has died. Take the battery off the machine and unplug it and let it sit for a bit. If that doesn't help pull the hard disk. You can easily and cheaply buy a laptop to ide/sata adapter so you can plug the hdd into your desktop as a slave and back it up. I would frankly get another laptop. They are easily procured for under $500 now..:)
 
Here's what the service place is going to do....not in any order

1. Boot it up with an external monitor connected.

2. Boot it without the battery

3. If multiple RAM modules, take one out, boot, repeat

4. Boot it without the hard drive in it

5. Plug in an external keyboard, un-plug the on board.

6. Pull out the CMOS battery and try booting.



What make/model is it? There is probably a take-apart somewhere.
 
Thanks for the suggestions. I'll try a few things out later tonight.

About hibernation on the laptop, I don't think I ever had a problem with it not hibernating when closed. The battery was replaced a month or so before this happened, so I'll have to try putting the old one back in and/or booting without any battery.

I'll have to look online for a take-apart guide, I tried to disassemble it myself, but after removing 243 (ok, slight exaggeration) screws, the case wouldn't come apart.

I wanted to try the memory thing, but it only has one unit. I think I know where I can borrow a RAM from another Toshiba of the same Sattelite generation.

I'd really rather replace the machine, but I'm cheap and still refuse to thouroughly accept the disposable mindset for a computer less than 5 years old. I still play Guild Wars on a slightly upgraded 4.5 year old machine.
 
I would try to clear the CMOS and see if that works. Pulling both the CMOS and the laptop battery out (while unplugged) for 1-5 minutes should clear the BIOS settings and it may boot.
 
OK, I tried several things last night, one at a time, each of which resulted in power lights, but no boot or any other message on screen:

-Removed battery, plug only
-Removed hard drive
-Removed the 1 memory stick
-Replaced the memory in the other slot
-Replaced the newer battery with the original battery

After this I felt like playing GW instead of tinkering any more, so I closed the lid and left it in the living room. A couple hours later, my wife noticed that the battery had fully charged (orange LED turned green), so she pressed the power button. It booted up completely. I ran a couple programs with no issues. Picked up the laptop off the floor and it went blank, only power lights on.

Encouraged that it had booted up I tried again. Once again, I was able to boot up, was actually able to log onto GW, then after several minutes, it went blank again while typing a PM to someone in-game.

I would say that the MoBo, Hard drive and RAM should be good since it did boot up, but I'm not sure what would be doing this? I still need to find a take-apart guide.

Thanks again
 
you have a bad display with the panel itself has an issue or the signal has issues inside the notebook. Backup your data(after you put the machine on a hard flat surface) and then buy a new machine.
 
On a good boot, what do the lights do? Does the HD spin up, then quite down? What I'm asking is do they do the same on a good boot as on a bad boot?


Also, what is the make/model? I've got some resources I can pull from.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top