Computer Woes

[raveneap]

Suddenly this afternoon my year and a half old HP 17" laptop decided it doesn't want to play. Shut itself off and nada. Turn it on, it tried to boot and shut down. Finally just wouldn't. I run virus scans religiously and should be clean. No indication of overheating . Friend who's a tech coming over tomorrow to look it over. It's still under warranty but hate to have to box it up and send it back and be without it for who knows how long. Luckily the wife has an identical unit so I can at last get on line while we figure out what to do. And even more luckily, I've got an external hard drive where up to date backups reside.

 

[Nicksterdemus]

Rotsa ruck on the friend freebie.

Sounds like you have your bases covered...

 

[cmort666]

This doesn't sound like a virus problem.

Try booting with and without the AC cord plugged in.

Try removing the battery and putting it back in.

Try swapping batteries between the two computers. If yours works with the other batter, your battery is bad.

 

[JcMack]

Or the power supply is shot or it's connection to laptop is bad.

 

[Bob R]

Or, flip it upside down, pop the cover and reseat the memory cards.

If you haven't done it, I would start by swapping batteries as was suggested.

bob

 

[cussedemgun]

Sounds like the memory card has Alzheimer's - - - how old did you say it is?

 

[raveneap]

Year and a half old. I've disconnected and reconnected the battery. Tried it without the external power. Friend got tied up on another job yesterday so is coming this afternoon. If nothing else, hope he can extract all of my stuff from the hard drive. I've got programs backed up on the external drive but it'd be nice to save all that's on the unit. Thanks for the suggestions folks. We'll see what happens this afternoon.

 

[JcMack]

This sounds like a bad external power pack. Did you change it out with your wifes power pack/power supply? Is there a green or red led on the power supply to tell you it may be functional? I fix this stuff for a living unfortunately, since the first P.C. (ibm) hit the market in 1981. Laptops contain a lot of heat generating stuff in a small package. Heat is the enemy of electronic components. Hence MTBF (mean time between failure) is a real crap-shoot on laptops.

 

[raveneap]

OK, after testing all of the areas we could think of, still no resolution. So, it's going back for warranty work. In the mean time, there's a new tower, 6g ram, quad core processor, 1TB hard drive , 20" flat screen sitting here. I figured that I don't really need a laptop and I missed the performance of my past towers, so this afternoon, bought this beast. Gives new meaning to the word "fast." When the lap top comes back it'll be a nice backup for when the wife's machine decides to go south.