Laptop suddenly won't boot up properly

digerati

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Joined
21 Mar 2004
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62
Just got back from a trip and despite working perfectly right up until last night, my laptop will no longer boot up properly. Its an HP nx7000 and was working great all weekend right up until I shut it down last night. Got up this morning and put it into its bag and went to the airport, took it out for the usual xray check, put it back and carried it onboard the plane with me. It was an empty flight so I had plenty of room around me and just left the bag on the seat next to me and it never moved around. Got home, plugged it in and hit the power button and now the problems start. The power button light comes on and I can hear the faint sound of the HD spinning up, but the cooling fan on the bottom of the laptop isn't spinning. Checking out the bottom on a second attempt, it seems that it will spin up very briefly but then just stop. This happens every time I try to turn on the computer. Also, the dvd drive activity light is always on and the drive itself makes this odd noise, sort of like a grinding sound but not exactly, definitely not the sound of spinning up though. During this, if I stare at the screen very carefully, I can make out the faint image of the HP logo that is usually there during startup, but then it disappears, again this happens every time I try to start up. I'm at a total loss to explain what the problem is and cannot figure what could have caused it. Anyone have any idea what it might be?
 
Is it still under warranty? If it is call them.

sounds like a bad psu in it make sure all the drives are in all the way and make sure nothing sound loose.
 
I am really unsure about the PSU thing - I have a hunch this may be easily rememdied with a competent repair shop (they are out there if you search with care).

Do you have another screen to put in to the VGA out? That is definitely worth a shot - and when you do that keep laptop closed so screen is disabled and open DVD drawer so that does nto suck power - also empty your PCI slot if it has anything....

Do all that and post back before tracking down the repair shop, hey?
 
Thanks for the pointers, I tried everything you suggested and it didn't help unfortunately. Same thing keeps happening. Power light comes on, main cooling fan spings up for a second before stopping, dvddrive will click endlessly, and the screen pretty much stays dark. Just no idea what the problem is. This sucks as the laptop is out of warranty and my past experience with laptops has been that most significant repairs run more than the thing is worth.
 
Ok, I've gotten it to boot up completely and seemingly work normally, with a few issues still. Basically, I took out the 512mb ram stick from the laptop leaving just the 512mb onboard. The system will now boot up normally and operate normally. If I put the stick back in, the earlier problems come back again. One thing still persists however. Regardless of whether the extra ram stick is in the laptop or not, the cooling/power fan underneath my laptop still does not run. It will spin up for a second or two when I first turn on the power, but then stop spinning and not spin again regardless. Prior to all this trouble, the fan always spun up when I turned it on and continued to spin during usage making a fair bit of fan noise. Now the system is virtually silent as the fan will never spin up except for that brief moment at the beginning.
 
sounds like you had bad ram - or ram gone bad.... in my limited experience this is the component most likely to fail and give issues that are hard to track.... First I have heard of it on a laptop though....

As regards your ongoing fan issue - please check out this thread of mine and if you feel comfortable to do it then do take your keyboard out (usually needs screen off also) and try applying a little lube to the fan - or at least inspecting it - you may get a pleasant surprise (like I did) and resolve the remaining issue
 

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