My dad had a laptop that he received from a work program that taught him how to use certain new programs that could be used for his job. He received it about 2 - 3 years ago, and when he did get it, it had the tags that could identify the manufacturer removed by the people who were doing the work program he attended. The laptop had windows ME as the OS and not much hardware wise that would make it exceptional by todays standards (10 gig harddrive, 128 ram, etc etc). Nothing exceptional. But there is no warranty or Manufacture number I can call, so thats bad.

However, when I was using this laptop, it had froze completely and had to force it to shutdown by holding down the power switch after using a small 128 megabyte flash drive to transfer some information. When I tried to restart the laptop, it would start up, but nothing would come on the screen. At first I thought the monitor had died/broke/whatever but noticed on starting it again that the monitor would flicker and start up, and that also, if given the time it needed (since it had a bios pw on it) that even if you tried to type in the password, it would never make it to windows and have that windows start up jingle.

So pretty much, the laptop seems to get power, but it doesn't start anything. Not even bios. I've tried a few things from restarting it (obviously), to using the boot floppy disk. Even when that happens, the computer will open the floppy disk and for a second start reading it before stopping. None of the hard drive lights will start up or anything. I even believe that its not reading the bios or what ever. So pretty much all I get is the power light and the sound of the fan running occasionally. Thats it.

So heres the question. I believe that this is a hardware problem, not software (hence why I post it here). I wonder if anyone, based on what I put up, agrees with what I think, and if anyone here knows how to fix it or what could be the actual problem. Any ideas and help is appreciated. Thanks :D

Hi PhoenixPhyre,

Try hooking it to an external display. Worth a try. If it doesn't breathe with that, try removing the battery and unplugging it. Try to power it with nothing plugged in, and then let it sit for an hour. Plug the battery back in and replug AC power. Try it. It is worth a shot.

I would also make sure that everything is plugged in snug... like the hard drive, memory and any other removable device.

Thanks,

Perry

Your external PS may have failed. Do you know how to test the PS? Is the transformer for the PS external or internal? If you test it how many volts (9, 12, 15,..)?

The things Ive tried so far is unplugging everything like battery cables and what not (except power) and nothing seemed to change, checking internally for anything loose (not much to see anyways), and hooking up to another monitor. Ive tried a different power cable to see if that woudl have any effect on it and it didnt seem to change a thing.

Id like to know how I would check the power supply things as well.

Do you have a volt meter?