No idea to why the computer won't load Windows.

Hi everyone!

Ok so a friend of mine had a problem with his laptop and asked me to repair it. I have it with me back home now but I cant find any solutions!?!?! Rarely been in this position!!!

Basically I switch it on, it shows the Acer logo with the F2 and F12 options at the bottom and then nothing! Literally, black screen, no info, no noise coming from the hard drives, no response from the cd rom.

I get access to the BIOS, changed the boot order to start from the windows XP CD but still nothing!


Any ideas to what we could do?!

Laptop: ACER Extensa 5235
OS : Windows 7
no other info :S

hi eatChocolate, and welcome to sevenforums, you joined 16 months ago, and this is your first post?

you say there's no noises from hard drive - how about a fan?

sometimes with laptops the fan intake (or the fan blades themselves) get clogged up with various types of fluff and crud.

if you feel up to it, open the laptop up, and check the fan is ok.

of course, it may be some other problem entirely, but you have to start somewhere. :)

Thanks for your reply mickey.

Lol I've used this forum several times last year but apparently it hasnt registered my posts? Weird... :S

Anyway, yeah the fans work fine...

erm, have you tried booting off a usb stick?

swapping the harddrive?

although re-reading your OP, it seems as if it's a more serious hardware problem but i 'm not sure what it is.

power maybe? ram? try unplugging/unseating everything you can (ram and hd), then stick it back in.

sorry, i'm just guessing.

no bios beeps i take it?

Well no, I feel confident doing it on a desktop but I never opened a laptop and it's not mine. So Id prefer to avoid the whole opening and unplugging part for now. If we can't find another solution, yeah i'll dive in there!

I haven't tried with a usb stick. Only have external hard drives. I'll try with that perhaps?

What do you mean by BIOS beeps? As in pressing the wrong key and getting a dirty BEEEEEEP? If so, yeah I do get them.

Thanks for your time mate!

It simply could be that the CD/DVD drive failed a while ago and only now the HDD has failed.

Is there a prompt when first turned on to select a one time boot menu?

If so hit that specific key to select that. Does it give you the option to boot from the CD/DVD drive? And if it does what does the CD/DVD drive do, with th CD or DVD in the drive, when that is selected and you hit the enter key? Do you hear anything from that drive.

Since this is a older notebook, haven't known any to come with XP on them in a few years, it is very likely that both drives have failed. Your friend just didn't notice that the CD/DVD drive had gone out.

eatChocolate said:

Well no, I feel confident doing it on a desktop but I never opened a laptop and it's not mine. So Id prefer to avoid the whole opening and unplugging part for now. If we can't find another solution, yeah i'll dive in there!

I haven't tried with a usb stick. Only have external hard drives. I'll try with that perhaps?

What do you mean by BIOS beeps? As in pressing the wrong key and getting a dirty BEEEEEEP? If so, yeah I do get them.

Thanks for your time mate!

you don't have to take the lappy right apart - most laptops are very easy to get into - at least access to ram and hardrive.

turn it over, and you'll probably see an easily removable panel, simply held down by a few screws - this normally gives you access to upgradable ram, hard drive and maybe wifi doodah. there's generally little symbols there to show you where things are.

if you're feeling a bit nervous (very understandable if it's not your machine - but you can't make it much worse than it is right now, can you?), visit the acer website and look for a service manual for the machine - that'll tell you how to take it apart, with diagrams. it's a real learning experience, opening up a laptop for the first time.

like many things, the first time is fraught with anxiety, but soon you'll be confident replacing laptop keyboards, screen inverters etc...just be careful and don't lose any screws. if you do remove the cover, you'll see the ram stick(s) and hard drives - it's really not difficult to unplug and reseat - maybe even easier than with a desktop pc.

as far as bios beeps go, sometimes when there's an error, the bios gives off a series of beeps, indicating a certain problem, such as lack of ram, video card etc...desktops normally do it, not sure about laptops.

Shootist said:

It simply could be that the CD/DVD drive failed a while ago and only now the HDD has failed.

Is there a prompt when first turned on to select a one time boot menu?

If so hit that specific key to select that. Does it give you the option to boot from the CD/DVD drive? And if it does what does the CD/DVD drive do, with th CD or DVD in the drive, when that is selected and you hit the enter key? Do you hear anything from that drive.

Since this is a older notebook, haven't known any to come with XP on them in a few years, it is very likely that both drives have failed. Your friend just didn't notice that the CD/DVD drive had gone out.

Well when I put the CD inside the drive it does the "scanning/scratching" sound but then it doesnt start turning. So the drive works I guess but it doesnt go as far as reading the CD :S

I selected the "boot from cd drive" as the primary option in the BIOS and on the prompt (when pressing F12). Both of them havent worked.

His laptop actually has Windows 7 on it (well there are two stickers on the machine - Intel Celeron and Windows 7). But it wont change anything if I try booting from a windows 7 cd instead of xp since the CD drive doesnt want to read my CD

mickey megabyte said:

you don't have to take the lappy right apart - most laptops are very easy to get into - at least access to ram and hardrive.

turn it over, and you'll probably see an easily removable panel, simply held down by a few screws - this normally gives you access to upgradable ram, hard drive and maybe wifi doodah. there's generally little symbols there to show you where things are.

if you're feeling a bit nervous (very understandable if it's not your machine - but you can't make it much worse than it is right now, can you?), visit the acer website and look for a service manual for the machine - that'll tell you how to take it apart, with diagrams. it's a real learning experience, opening up a laptop for the first time.

like many things, the first time is fraught with anxiety, but soon you'll be confident replacing laptop keyboards, screen inverters etc...just be careful and don't lose any screws. if you do remove the cover, you'll see the ram stick(s) and hard drives - it's really not difficult to unplug and reseat - maybe even easier than with a desktop pc.

as far as bios beeps go, sometimes when there's an error, the bios gives off a series of beeps, indicating a certain problem, such as lack of ram, video card etc...desktops normally do it, not sure about laptops.

I know what you mean now concerning that beep sound. No I dont get that one.
But anyway, I'll try opening it and starting the computer without some of the ram etc.

good luck!

eatChocolate said:

Well when I put the CD inside the drive it does the "scanning/scratching" sound but then it doesnt start turning. So the drive works I guess but it doesnt go as far as reading the CD :S

I selected the "boot from cd drive" as the primary option in the BIOS and on the prompt (when pressing F12). Both of them havent worked.

His laptop actually has Windows 7 on it (well there are two stickers on the machine - Intel Celeron and Windows 7). But it wont change anything if I try booting from a windows 7 cd instead of xp since the CD drive doesnt want to read my CD



I know what you mean now concerning that beep sound. No I dont get that one.
But anyway, I'll try opening it and starting the computer without some of the ram etc.

If the CD/DVD drive isn't reading CDs or DVDs at boot then the drive is bad. Whether you can hear it spinning/scratching/whatever doesn't matter if it doesn't read the disc then the drive is bad.
So your comment "So the drive works I guess" is totally incorrect. The drive doesn't work.