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View Full Version : Laptop won't boot up!!!! Please help!!!



BombJack
11-02-2005, 11:31 AM
Ok folks here's my problem. I ahve a major problem with my laptop. It's under a year old so should still be covered by warranty.



However, I want to arm myself with all the facts before I give the manufacturer a phone to sort things out.



First of all, I'ld better outline the spec of my lappie.



NuSystems NB: 3ghz Pentium 4 - 800mhz FSB, 512meg PC3200 ram, 60 gb 7200 rpm hd. The laptop is primarily used for audio production using Cubase sX and a variety of plugins. It is however, a dual boot machine, with a lean stripped down audio boot partition, and another general boot partition which is used for surfing the web, and other miscellaneous tasks.



Now - the problem...



I was surfing the web last night checking up on soem ebay auctions, and decied to restart the machine to start some work on some tracks I have in development. so I hit restart to initiate this process.



However, a split second before the machine switched itself off, a dialogue box flashed onto the screen. However, as it was only visible for a split second, I didn't get the chance to see what it said.



The dialogue box, and contents did look similar however to the kind of message when an application crashes - I can't remmebr the exact wording, but I'm sure you know what I mean. Anyway, I didn't think anything of this until the machine attempted to restart itself but couldn't even get to the part in boot up where there is a quick flash of system spec etc. Essentially it doesn't switch itself on.



When I encountered the problem, I left it to try and sort itself out, but it didn't so I decided to manually restart it - ie switch it off with the on/off power button. This I did, and restarted again, and the same thing happens. When the machine is switched on it sounds like it is going into it's usual boot up procedure, but after a few seconds - approx 5 - it cuts out. The power LED indicator visible on the laptops shell glows as you would expect, and in the first few secs another led indicator glows/flickers as well (whether it's the hard drive or cpu led I don't know).



So my question is - what could be the cause of this malfunction? The thing is, I have seen hard drives go down, and assorted other problems, but I haven't seen anything that looks as serious as this.



I have had the laptop for approximately 8 months and in this time it has been a great machine - completely trouble free. It has however always been really warm. As far as I know, it's a desktop cpu in a laptop, so you can understand why - I'm pretty sure it isn't a mobile Pentium. It was my main concern when I bought the laptop, as I know that warm machines can have a tendency to crash which isn't useful when you plan to play your music live using the laptop. Fortunately I haven't used the laptop in any "live" environment yet, but this malfunction has made me lose a lot of confidence in the machine. I also worry that even if the machine goes back and is repaired, it is the kind of problem that will never go away. Next time when it's out of warranty there could be a mjaor problem.



So folks, any advice, wisdom, whatever would be great to assist me with my problem.


Cheers

BombJack

Barely Human
11-02-2005, 01:43 PM
Hmmmm, theres only a couple of things i can think of. And id mostly be looking at the cpu fan. The bios monitors the cpu temp, and if it rises above a certain temp, then it will switch the machine off to prevent damage. Maybe your fan is faulty, or the bios needs flashing a newer version. Its hard to tell without looking at the things.

BombJack
11-02-2005, 01:50 PM
I have left the machine for many hours (to cool down) and it still does it.
Does this mean it could still be the fan???

cheers

BombJack

Barely Human
11-02-2005, 05:15 PM
If the fan isnt working at all, then the cpu temp will rise very rapidly. So it could be that. Without looking at the machine its hard to make a judgement on what the problem actually is...

dan the acid man
11-02-2005, 08:09 PM
could also be a virus, there are a few knocking about that turn your pc off when its about to boot, the flickering led is your hard drive led, thats normal for it to do that

Barely Human
11-02-2005, 08:54 PM
Can you get into your bios without it crashing? If you can, then its probably not a hardware problem...

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