Anyone able to help with a non-starting computer?

Money_Grabber13579

Over the last 2 weeks, my laptop has gone through phases of not booting up. When I press the power button, the light will come on, but the screen won't and it won't boot up. So far, I've managed to get it to boot eventually by taking the battery out and power cable however tonight, I just removed the power cable and it eventually started. Not sure if it's linked or not!

Any idea what's wrong with it? It's 3 years now.

davester

does it work plugged in without the battery in? If so then looks like your battery is shot. unless you can get a cheap battery for it then its now a small desktop

My 5 yr old acer battery died after 3 yrs, need to upgrade anyway so now its a small desktop that is easy to clear away.

Money_Grabber13579

I'm not totally sure what's causing the problem as this time I only removed the power cable and it started. Also, sometimes it will start after I turn it off using the power button and then restart. I haven't found a common solution yet. Sometime it will start first time as well!

JasX

Money_Grabber13579 wrote: »

I'm not totally sure what's causing the problem as this time I only removed the power cable and it started. Also, sometimes it will start after I turn it off using the power button and then restart. I haven't found a common solution yet. Sometime it will start first time as well!

First thing to make sure you do is backup absolutly everything next time it boots up in case its not long for this world......

Money_Grabber13579

JasX wrote: »

First thing to make sure you do is backup absolutly everything next time it boots up in case its not long for this world......

Yep, I've just got Acronis True Image 2010 in the post this morning so will be making a drive image with that!

davb

Not much you can check really with a laptop - could be the power adaptor and/or battery, but to check either would need money thowing at it -unless you know someone with a similar unit.
Definately a good idea to make your backup first.
May be worth removing and reseating the RAM, and if there is more than one module, try each in turn on it's own for a while.
It sounds as though it's not getting as far as the hard drive when it fails, but just in case, you could remove the hard drive and boot from an Ubuntu CD to test it.

Do you have any diagnostics for the laptop - someimes on a CD, or on a hidden partition, or downloadable from their support site.

Money_Grabber13579

Yep, tried the diagnostic tool and everything came up fine. Also make a drive image with Acronis so hopefully in the worst case situation, I won't lose anything!

Oneday77

Money_Grabber13579 wrote: »

Over the last 2 weeks, my laptop has gone through phases of not booting up. When I press the power button, the light will come on, but the screen won't and it won't boot up. So far, I've managed to get it to boot eventually by taking the battery out and power cable however tonight, I just removed the power cable and it eventually started. Not sure if it's linked or not!

Any idea what's wrong with it? It's 3 years now.

When you say it doesn't boot up, does the light come on and then it just goes off again or does it stay on but the screen is blank. Do you have access to a PC monitor, try plugging it into the laptop and see if you can see on it.
Well done on the getting it to boot with no battery or power supply previously, your a legend
When it doesn't boot up is it after th elaptop has been just turned off and left as is say on a table or do you close the lid, close the lid and store it on its side in a case. You get the idea. If you do move or close the lid between boots try not to for the next time. If it is fine with no movements then it is likely a loose connection somewhere ie the screen or power board in the machine. The fact that it works off the battery or the mains sometimes to me points to something past the actual power sources.

Money_Grabber13579

Oneday77 wrote: »

When you say it doesn't boot up, does the light come on and then it just goes off again or does it stay on but the screen is blank. Do you have access to a PC monitor, try plugging it into the laptop and see if you can see on it.
Well done on the getting it to boot with no battery or power supply previously, your a legend
When it doesn't boot up is it after th elaptop has been just turned off and left as is say on a table or do you close the lid, close the lid and store it on its side in a case. You get the idea. If you do move or close the lid between boots try not to for the next time. If it is fine with no movements then it is likely a loose connection somewhere ie the screen or power board in the machine. The fact that it works off the battery or the mains sometimes to me points to something past the actual power sources.

Obviously I replaced the battery and power cable before I tried it again!:p

The light comes on, but the screen stays blank. It only occurs after turning it off. I hadn't actually thought of a loose connection, but now that you mention it, it has been moved about quite a bit of late so I suppose it might have caused a loose connection. If so, would that be easily fixed?

IcyEars

You didn't mention what make of Laptop it is but I occasionally get a similar problem with my Toshiba laptop and we sometimes have it with some of the Dell laptops at work (I work for a big company that has over 2500 Dell laptops). They are working fine and then when they shut down they just won't turn back on when you press the power button.

The solution (for all the machines) is to remove the battery with the power lead plugged in (and turned on). Then pull out the power adaptor. Leave it for 30 secs or so and then plug the power lead back in. Now press the power button and the laptop starts up and finally reinsert the battery.

After this all is well until it happens again.

I've never been able to track down the cause of it but the fact that it will start if the power is there and then removing the battery would suggest something to do with the battery or something that gets stuck but removing the battery when there is another source of power "resets" the offending compnent. It's not dud batteries though as I've seen machines do it straight out of the box and also machines do it when we have replaced the batteries with brand new ones.

You do need to do this in a specific order though. If you try without the power cable (i.e. remove power then battery, then insert power and then battery it sometimes works but not always).

Money_Grabber13579

Funnily enough, it is a Toshiba! It only started doing this around 2 weeks ago, and has done so about every 3 restarts ever since.

As someone else mentioned earlier on, I don't think it's the hard drive as I can't hear the hard drive reset when this happens i.e. when I turn it off. Normally I would hear this if I did a hard restart.