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#1
Dad's computer, desperately want to save :(
Hi guys, me again.
I have to say, this problem has nothing to do with Windows 7, or any other OS. The problem is worse, and to do with its hardware. I hope some of you guys with experience may know how to help me.
Story: -
Yesterday afternoon, my dad was on his old laptop, an Acer Aspire 1360 trying to get his internet to work on his USB wireless adaptor. When he plugged it in, the computer wouldn't detect it. So I set about prising apart the two out cases of the USB stick. I found, where the USB plug and the solders weren't all connecting up with eachother. So what we did, was plug it in without the case, and use our thumbs to make the contacts meet. It worked, and the laptop picked up the adaptor. But to all stupidity (but in my defence, I have had no experience of hardware issues in my life before, and had no idea where static electricity came in the line) I put the edge of a metal spoon, on the contacts, then suddenly the whole laptop just died.
Pressing the power button was useless. It was then we realised static in the spoon must've shorted out the electrics in the adaptor, then travelled through to the laptop circuits. My dad thought that it was no use trying to fix it, it was probably 10 years overdue warranty () and the laptop was very slow either way. He put it on my lap, and said "Here's an early Christmas present". I told him he had all his business files, personal data still on the HDD. It was then he told me to try and take out the HDD and maybe get it to life in my laptop.
I took it to my room, and began disassembling it. And man, I think I've learned a lot. I took off the casing (there was lots of it) and managed to get to the circuitry beneath the keyboard. Just out of curiosity, I decided to take out all the screws and see if there was anything interesting. To my delight, I found the actual CPU beneath a heat sink (very easy screws to get off ), pushed on the 'latchet' and off came the CPU. I was amazed, never actually seeing or holding one of these things in person in my whole life. I put it back after a period of staring at it.
After that I tried removing every other piece of hardware inside, including the CD ROM drive, the touchpad, the RAM (will become important later on) disconnecting the keyboard, removing the screen (I cut off the wires, thinking I would not need it again ) etc. till none of it was left untouched. It was then, after boredom, I decided to try turning on the PC again. Lo and behold, the heatsink fan started spinning, I heard some clicking of the hard drive, and it was alive for about 10 seconds, then suddenly powered off. I kept on turning it on and off, to see if I could get any more life out of it (each time it stayed on for a bit longer or a bit shorter). Of course, I didn't have the screen on it so I couldn't tell if it was actually doing anything the time the fans were spinning. By now, it was about 11 pm at night (usually half nine for me) and decided to give it a rest.
The next morning (this morning) I tried turning it on again. Same as before, but I jumped out of my seat as I heard loud beeps coming from somewhere underneath the motherboard; there were 4 beeps. I went about searching on the internet and found a page which identifies the amount of beeps and the causes. As it was something to do with hardware, I took everything out, one at a time, each time booting up and the same beeps happening each time. I had tried everything I thought of, then I realised there was the RAM module on the underside of the case. I took it out, booted up the laptop and there were no beeps emitted. I put it back in, the beeps there again. I tried the stick in a different slot, still beeping. Removed it again, no beeps.
I thought this was very strange, as I had no idea how a module of RAM (192 mb worth ) could have got broken overnight.
I decided to ask for help here, and well, here's what you got.
So, please can some of you help, my dad would be so grateful if I could do something to help either put the hard drive in my laptop, or otherwise get his laptop working.
We would appreciate so very much, thank you in advance,
Dom.