Dropped Advent 7041 laptop. Help!

onzey

Hi

My daughter has just phoned from USA saying she's dropped her Advent 7041 laptop and now it won't boot. As far as I can gather the machine POSTS normally (she says it beeps as normal) but then she is just left with a blank screen and flashing cursor. She has tried booting as usual and also while pressing F8 to try and get Windows boot options but nothing happens (except for continual beeping while holding F8).

She has entered the bios and checked that the first boot option is the cdrom drive but has been unable to get anywhere by starting up with the Advent recovery cd inserted. (i.e drive whirrs up and down but nothing happens)

I suspect the best option really is to first check that nothing has become disconnected internally so ideally I need another 7041 owner to furnish instructions that I could relay to her on how to partially dismantle the laptop to check that the RAM or disc drive/cdrom connections haven't been jolted loose.

Any other suggestions on what/what not to do most welcome.

Thanks

Malestrom

Did she drop it while it was switched on? If so, the hard drive heads probably crashed rendering the drive useless. If not, then its probably the memory thats come unseated although it normally wouldn't POST correctly if this was the case, although it may not actually be completing the POST.

Memory is normally accessed through a small panel on the underside of the laptop, usually held in place with a single screw. Ensure that she 'earths' herself first to remove any static in her body by touching the exposed metal part of a nearby radiator or the outside of a metal electrical appliance like a kettle or toaster. Tell her to remove the small panel and then unclip the memory, remove it and then re-insert it, ensuring it clips securely into place. If there's a spare slot, she could try it in there also. Hope that helps.

onzey

Thanks for reply Malestrom

I believe the laptop was on. I've been waiting all evening hoping she would ring again to give more details but she's got classes to go to.

newfoundglory

Yes, i'd have to agree with the previous poster about the hard drive and the laptop being on. If it was dropped while the hard drive was spinning (which is what it does of course!), then the drive heads will likely not only have scratched the surface of the drive as the laptop hit the ground but possibly got damaged in the process.

Some laptops now come with technology to prevent this, by detecting the dropping and then locking read/write head in place to prevent damage to the drive and loss of data on it.

Of course... the problem could be something completely different!

If I was trying to work out the problem, I would first check all the parts and cables are connected and seated properly; then I would probably use a "live" cd of linux or freebsd and trying booting that into memory and then try mounting the drive (fat32 or ntfs) to see if works (read-only of course).

onzey

Thanks nfg.

I've not heard back from her yet but I did suggest to her earlier to maybe get someone to download knoppix (linux on cd) of which I have at least a little knowledge. However there is some uncertainty over ability to boot from cd because she couldn't boot from her recovery disc. However she did try the disc some while back and it didn't always boot so perhaps the disc is dodgy.

I have got hold of a diagnostic program which can run from bootable media or drive and also a Seagate hard drive diagnostic program (again bootable). If we can get something to boot then perhaps we can get somewhere. As you say though, she needs to check, or get someone else to check, connections etc.

Hoping to hear from her today but the 8hr tome difference doesn't help.

onzey

Daughter has contacted us to say she and a friend have managed to get the Advent up and running again. Not sure of complete details but they copied some files from the recovery disk to the friend's usb drive and managed to boot off that and get some restore options. If I've understood her correctly one of these was to opt for a Windows restore point but I may be wrong, as I can't see this as an option from the recovery disc, looking at the pcservicecall site (the support site for her laptop)

Regardless, the bottom line seems to be the machine is booting normally again and running ok. Think I will suggest she scans the disc surface for errors. She has already backed up some important work files I believe.

drlight_2

If you still have the seagate diagnostics disk, this can give you good information on how well the disk has survived, and give you advice, it maybe worth running it.