Datamaster

[ed hess]

when mine doesnt boot the led display characters come on but the hd doesnt spin up.

Are you saying yours doesnt even get this far?
ed

 

[kwick6]

when mine doesnt boot the led display characters come on but the hd doesnt spin up.

Are you saying yours doesnt even get this far?
ed

yep, exactly...nothing displays on lcd and don't get the little green leds on top either.

 

[ed hess]

mine get further than yours.

In your case i wonder if the tab the fits into the power switch is broken off
or the switch itself. unless a board is not seated. dig in take it apart and see what you find. mine was only 300 used so if i cant fix it......

ed

 

[kwick6]

mine get further than yours.

In your case i wonder if the tab the fits into the power switch is broken off
or the switch itself. unless a board is not seated. dig in take it apart and see what you find. mine was only 300 used so if i cant fix it......

ed

Don't think its the power switch. It used to light up a green led when the cord was plugged in, now it don't.

I'll buy a plug and see what happens.

If I were to take it apart, it'd NEVER work agian... computers are too delicate, I'd probably mess stuff up while taking it apart with some channelocks .. :roll:


Scott

 

[ed hess]

put laptop together last nite.
turn it on...hd spins up, bios setup page comes up, set date and time, continue to load win98, part way thru it just poers down. crap...

restart in safe mode or dos it does same thing. Now the wierd part is it is time related as dos only gets a c: prompt and then nothing is happening so its definatley hardware and not the os.


at least it will start up ... its better than what i had before but this is a different problem.

I was wondering if the heat sink to the cpu is not making good contact and maybe overheating but this whole process is probly 10 seconds or so
So I dont know if a temperature problem would make it do this.

smaug you got any ideas on this one?

ed

guess ill just take it apart again, adjust the boards by throwin em at the wall, reassemble and try again! lol

 

[BigBadSmoosh]

ed, at this point, id say its something hardware related.. if it just powers down then something is shorting out or not intializing..

im thinking, since everything seems to get power it might not be shorting out.. and heat shouldnt make it shutoff, i mean inless you feel the bottom of it, and it is hotter than it ever has been before.. i would doubt it, laptops are made to run hot..

umm, you could try taking it apart again, using one of those "cans of air" spraying all the stuff clean, and putting it back together.. might also want to make sure the memory chips are seated firmly.. umm if it gets into bios will it sit in bios for awhile.. or will it ALWAYS powerdown after 10secs no matter what you are doing?

 

[Flyin Ryan]

:lol:

 

[ed hess]

it will sit in bios for as long as you want. this has a bios test that takes like 10 minutes to run,,, it test everything. No errors. then if you go into os...poof it powers down. Im gonna take it apart. MAybe i got a long screw in a short screw hole... beats me but i got nothin to lose here.

I figure im making progress since the hd would spin.
as for memory stick being loose. I dunno memory passed the long bios test of it. Unless a small vibration from the hd made it loose conection.

Only thing i maybe should have tried with it last nite was the knee height drop test.

let ya know after round 2 with this bitch.

ed

 

[BigBadSmoosh]

ed - if it will do the bios checks for awhile and passes them all.. then im thinking it might be software based?! this is kinda a weird problem, while loading windows maybe there is a driver or something that makes it shut down.. next step in myopinion would be to try reinstalling the operating system and stuff..

if it passes the bios test, then the hardware "should" be fine..

 

[MikeRenz]

mine get further than yours.

In your case i wonder if the tab the fits into the power switch is broken off
or the switch itself. unless a board is not seated. dig in take it apart and see what you find. mine was only 300 used so if i cant fix it......

ed

Don't think its the power switch. It used to light up a green led when the cord was plugged in, now it don't.

I'll buy a plug and see what happens.

If I were to take it apart, it'd NEVER work agian... computers are too delicate, I'd probably mess stuff up while taking it apart with some channelocks .. :roll:
Scott

scott...i'm willing to be you just need a new battery. Also, some computers will not boot up without a good clock battery either. Its typically a coin-sized lithium battery. They tend to wear away every 4-5 yrs or less depending on use. Did you notice if the laptop wasn't keeping time/date properly towards the end of its booting up life?

 

[ed hess]

voltage on both bios batteries in mine are ok... checked with meter.

as for>>>>while loading windows <<<

it shuts off after sitting at the dos prompt for the same few seconds also!

Windows is not in the picture at this point.... must be a hardware thing....

weres my tiny lil screwdriver at...gonna get this sucka.

ed

 

[BigBadSmoosh]

ed - i dunno man, if the bios hardware check didnt find anything, then all devices are sending the proper signals, and the memory is writeable and what not.. take out any pcmcia cards you have, try again..

and as for taking advice from mike renz.. I dunno, he scares me, but he is smart as hell, so eh couldnt hurt.

 

[MikeRenz]

any memory error i've ever gotten at boot up was usually displayed on the screen, but that could just be luck. Have you tried removing some of the ram and booting it up? Power surges can kill memory.

 

[BigBadSmoosh]

if seated improperly might not be an error..

i dunno man, im just tryin everything I can think of