New
#1
Sudden Death, computer no longer boots
Death of a laptop
Note
The information in the related posts listed above give much more detail and provide more options than what I'm posting here. This is a general post based on my experiences with the sudden death of a Compaq Presario F762NR laptop. These are very basic steps, but they're all in one place. I know I list Vista as the OS, but I think this is a generic HW issue unrelated to a particular OS. Perhaps this will be of some help to a member.
Background: The laptop was 4 years old with the most recent Vista service pack. Prior to the death, I was working on an android application using the Android SDK and Oracle JDK (v7), with eclipse as my development environment. I borrowed an HTC G3 phone and loaded the app onto it using the HTC USB tether. After making a final tweak to the Android app GUI, I reloaded it on the phone and things looked fine. The next day, the laptop was "dead".
Dead means: I hear the fan spin, the HD starts for a brief moment, and there is nothing on the display - the machine then restarts. This repeats until I pull the power. I've tried to get to the BIOS screen, but can't seem to hit the 'fn' key at the correct moment, either that or POST hasn't gone that far to allow me to get there.
"Try these things first" standard problem solving:
- Reboot - no change
- Determine hardware point of failure. Each step continues the process without "undoing" the previous step.
When I removed hardware, it stayed removed for subsequent hardware testing.
- remove all USB connected devices, reboot - no change
- remove the Battery, reboot on AC power - no change
- remove memory, reboot - no change
- Attach external monitor, reboot - no change
The last piece of HW I could pull was the HD - no sense rebooting, POST will fail without a HD. So I pulled the HD and connected it to another machine on a USB port (external case or cable required). The 2nd machine read the drive and I was able to back up my data. But..... the 2nd machine had a similar death when I restarted that machine. It seemed as though I had some nasty malware on the drive that I transferred to the 2nd machine when I copied my data.
The 2nd machine is an old HP desktop running XP. I was able to boot into Safe mode do some investigation. AV scans using multiple sources (Avast-main AV app on system, Norton scan from the website , Malwarebytes, MS security) all reported a clean system. I noticed however that my applications partition, normally a junction on the "C" drive was also the "Z" drive. This might not be unexpected because Windows was somehow confused, saw a drive and added it in as drive letter - why "Z" I don't know.
At this point of my story, the 2nd machine is back and running fine. My laptop is gathering dust until I try a few more things. In the end it could very well be that the laptop is truly dead and requires some hardware, be it LCD or motherboard. I've already shelled out money for a new laptop, so the old laptop might just be relegated to being a boat anchor.
Things I have yet to try, both are easy and the OEM manual will tell me how to open the box, find the part, and do it. Well - the CMOS battery anyway. I can find other parts after I pull the screws.
- replace the CMOS battery
- reseat cooling fan
- self-booting hardware diagnostic mentioned in one of the related posts
That's about as much as I have right now. If anyone can think of another path that's not mentioned in the related posts, please let me know. Please don't spend too much time, but if you have a quick suggestion, do post it. If I figure it out (that depends if I take the time to perform open-heart surgery on it), I'll certainly come back here and tell you what worked.
Peace!