Ugh. Dead laptop. Need help.
By
Call Me Awesome,
Posted on: 2009-11-22 21:46 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs
Can you load up the BIOS screen?
Also, I know this sounds dumb. But when was the last time you actually cleaned the laptop out (we're talking compressed air, pop the battery, pop the HD, reseat everything, etc).
And, if you can get to the BIOS screen, can you get far enough to get the alternate boot options screen (to choose to boot from HD, floppy, optical, etc)?
And you ARE getting screen output right?
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
Quote:
Can't get to the BIOS Screen. I've tried spamming F8 but it doesn't get that far.|
Originally Posted by Hyperstrike
Can you load up the BIOS screen?
Also, I know this sounds dumb. But when was the last time you actually cleaned the laptop out (we're talking compressed air, pop the battery, pop the HD, reseat everything, etc). And, if you can get to the BIOS screen, can you get far enough to get the alternate boot options screen (to choose to boot from HD, floppy, optical, etc)? And you ARE getting screen output right? |
As for video output, I can't be sure that there is any. When I turn it on there is no screen activity until it starts loading the BIOS, and since I don't think it's getting that far I don't know if there is video or not. I would think, though, that it'd be unlikely to have two simultaneous failures.
As for cleaning, reseating, that has been awhile, so I'll go thru that at lunch just to see if that does anything.
Update. Took some lunch time and removed hard drive and the memory SODIMMs, used compressed air to clean out the heat sink area and around the processor. Still nothing. I also tried booting it with an external monitor attached. No dice there, either. 
Looks like this month's subscription to CoX is going to be a waste. :P
Quote:
It does sound like something died; it kind of reminds me of the symptoms on a work desktop that fried it's video card. That machine powered up the fans, then sat there doing nothing... opening it up revealed that the card overheated and popped a half dozen capacitors. As I recall it sat there with fans spinning and giving regular momentary flashes of the HDD activity light. Fortunately it was a desktop, not a laptop, so I just replaced the blown vid card. (It was amazing just what the card looked like, the capacitors had popped and peeled away just like a kernel of popcorn)|
Originally Posted by Tyrrano
Update. Took some lunch time and removed hard drive and the memory SODIMMs, used compressed air to clean out the heat sink area and around the processor. Still nothing. I also tried booting it with an external monitor attached. No dice there, either.
Looks like this month's subscription to CoX is going to be a waste. :P |
Unfortunately troubleshooting hardware on a laptop is a bit tougher; many of them you can't replace components on. If there's a PC repair shop near you it may be worthwhile to at least see what they have to say before you give up. About the only good news is that I doubt your hard drive is a problem so you'll at least be able to get data off of it. Small consolation I know.
COH has just been murdered by NCSoft. http://www.change.org/petitions/ncso...city-of-heroes
Quote:
That goes further to reinforce what I've been reading. (Heh, haven't gotten much real work done today |
Originally Posted by Call Me Awesome
It does sound like something died; it kind of reminds me of the symptoms on a work desktop that fried it's video card. That machine powered up the fans, then sat there doing nothing... opening it up revealed that the card overheated and popped a half dozen capacitors. As I recall it sat there with fans spinning and giving regular momentary flashes of the HDD activity light. Fortunately it was a desktop, not a laptop, so I just replaced the blown vid card. (It was amazing just what the card looked like, the capacitors had popped and peeled away just like a kernel of popcorn)
Unfortunately troubleshooting hardware on a laptop is a bit tougher; many of them you can't replace components on. If there's a PC repair shop near you it may be worthwhile to at least see what they have to say before you give up. About the only good news is that I doubt your hard drive is a problem so you'll at least be able to get data off of it. Small consolation I know. |
) Apparently this is the same issue that various Dell, HP. etc. laptops have endured - faulty nVidia chipsets. The northbridge chip heat-cycles and eventually the solder connections fracture. The result, no video. I'm looking into some methods for reflowing the solder connections - I may just spring to have it done rather than try it myself with a heat gun like some have done.Blech.
Yeah, yeah, I know, this isn't a PC support forum. But over the years I've learned to respect the opinions and hardware savvy expressed on this forum.
Anyway, I've had this laptop for a couple of years now. Everex Stepnote XT5300T, running Vista. Home Premium, I think. Does everything I need, including AutoCAD, Revit, and of course CoX. It's been a great laptop, until today. So I headed to the support forum for Everex, only to find they've folded their tent for good.
Usually on startup the lights flash, the fan spins up to high speed for a few seconds, then it slows down as the computer continues to boot up. Went to turn it on this weekend and nothing. Power lights come on, fan spins up, and it hangs there. The fan runs on high speed the whole time, and the drive activity light flashes about once a second, very regular.
I tried downloading a Vista recovery CD, burned that and tried starting from it, but the machine never gets far enough to access the CD drive. I will admit that the drive has always been a touch flaky, though.
Once upon a time I was good at diagnosing this sort of thing and figuring out solutions. But with Vista, I don't have a clue where to start. Can someone throw me a bone? I think this machine is set to try and boot from a flash drive - is it possible to simply copy the contents of the boot CD I made to a flash drive, or is there a special procedure to make it bootable?