Is my laptop dead?

wazza

I have a Compaq Presario V6000 running windows XP. Had it since mid 2006 and used it approx 3-4 hours daily.

Few months ago for no reason the screen would go blank. Happened approx once or twice a week. When it happens I noticed that the harddrive light is unlit. Now when i restart the laptop the harddrive fails to start. The harddrive light comes on once then goes off. It no longer flickers. All i can hear is the fan. The laptop then restarts trying to start the harddrive. The screen is blank all the time. No bios info etc.

Today managed to get around to removing the hard drive and put it into a caddy and plug it into a different laptop via usb. I can see the files on the old hard drive so that means the hard drive is working properly.

So what can be wrong with the old laptop? I feel it maybe the hard drive or some software on the motherboard that fails to start the operating system, bios or even put any info on the screen.

Any suggestions?

robmar0se

As I said in reply to one of yr other posts, do a chkdsk c:/r on the laptop drive - if its in a caddy you will need to replace "C" with the allocated drive letter.

At the end it should tell you the state of the drive, if there are no bad sectors then the problem is unlikely to be the drive, especially as you say you don't see any boot info when you start.

Next time you try to boot the old lappie, connect an external monitor (to eliminate screen issues), and see if you can actaullay get into the BIOS.

If still no BIOS screen, and you definitively have power, then you may well have a fried laptop - the only other thing to try is to remove any static: Remove the power lead and battery, then press and hold the start button for 15 secs, then try with only the power lead attached (no battery).

PS One other thing! Is the jack socket in the lappie loose, ie is there significant movement when you try to wiggle it? Possibler power issue, or is the power light on when you connect to external power?

Figment

Often a symptom of a dead battery that won't accept a charge. Try removing the battery and powering up with just the charger attached.



(Correction to post above: chldsk c:/r should read chkdsk c:/r)

wazza

On my old laptop the battery was dead. It could not hold its charge. I run the laptop on mains all the time.

Before i removed the harddrive, when i switched on the laptop the power led lights up. I can hear the fan working. No harddrive light which would normally flicker. The screen is always blank. It will stay in that stage for a while and then reboot. I think it is rebooting trying to kick start something.

Now the hard drive has been removed and i found it works on another laptop via usb.

Next plan is to connect the old laptop to tv to see if something crops on the screen.

smos585

Did you run a chldsk c:/r when you had the hdd in the caddy? Of course change the drive letter as necessary. The /r will attempt to repair the drive, and quite often fixes start up probs.

wazza

Not yet. I want to transfer any important data onto another hard drive first.