Korean Job Discussion Forums

[BS.Dos.]

My 14-month old Compaq laptop running Vista is giving me some problems and I was wondering if anyone can help me resolve it.

Basically, it doesn't boot. When I start-up, the lights flicker on as normal, but the screen remains blank. Also, after I've pressed the power on button, it tries to start, but after a few seconds, it switches itself off before then attempts to restart again. It first started doing this about a week ago. When it first did it, I switched it off, unplugged it, left it over night and then returned in the morning, tried it again and it worked fine. Since then, I had no problems with it for about a week. On Monday evening I was watching a DVD on it and it was running fine. Yesterday morning however, it began playing up again and, once again, I couldn't get it started. I went to school, returned in the evening and tried to get it going again, but it continued to either start, but with the screen remaining completely blank or, it started, stopped, restarted, stopped etc. I switched it off again, left it for about an hour, started it and it finally began working normally. As before, it worked fine again last night, but this morning, it wouldn't work again.

I don't know a great deal about resolving PC problems, but I'm inclined to think that I need to look at the BIOS settings as I think it may be trying to boot from the CDROM drive, but I can't remember which keys I need to press to get to BIOS (Sorry, but I don't have the Compaq model number with me at the moment). If it were trying to boot from the disk drive and couldn't, would the screen still remain blank as it does?

There's a PC guy in my town who will be my next port of call if I can't resolve it myself. Just thought I'd run it through Dave's first.

Hope you can help.

[I_Am_The_Kiwi]

How far does it load until it restarts?

Is tehre a C in the drive? try it wboth with and without - it should boot from
HDD if it finds no CD anyways.

Does it make any beeps when its restarting?

Next time is turns on, run a disk defrag, and diskcheck. might have errors on your disks, or maybe part of windows is a bit fuct.

[BS.Dos.]

I can't do anything as the screen remains blank. There are no 'beeping' sounds when it attempts to boot.

[nobbyken]

Sorry to sound silly, but there couldn't be a battery/power problem, could there.
Such as, the electric supply losing connectivity and the battery being too dead to boot up.

This may explain why sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't!

[ttompatz]

diagnostic time:

Make sure the battery is properly seated and connecting.
Make sure the power supply is properly connected (not a broken connector at the case or a dead brick.)

When it powers on, do you see the POST screen (power on self test)?
RAM, VIDEO, DRIVES, ETC?

IF no, then you have a mainboard / RAM problem, see the service center (You don't sound as though you would be comfortable doing real hardware checks yourself (like re-seating the RAM or actually opening the case up)).

IF yes, then you have a windows/HDD problem.

Do you have the original CDs for the laptop?

.

[BS.Dos.]