Laptop and Desktop fooped!! Help!

[Fallout]

Ok, so I am almost without a computer now, which is not a good place to be! Here're the problems ...

Laptop
Once upon a time I was happily using my laptop when the dog decided to come over and head butt it like a rhino. The impact can only be described as heinous. The screen went ape **** green, and since then it flickers and sometimes just goes white and the compo locks. Suspect possibly a loose screen cable or something, but haven't really been able to open the laptop up.

I can deal with that, but now it has also developed and intermittent start up issue. It normally takes about 20 attempts over 10 - 15 minutes with a combination of taking out battery and power cable, random waits, pressing the power button, failing, repeating until it finally boots. The failed start up symptom is all the lights coming on, and HD spinning up noise, but no loading and totally blank screen (no power to screen). Leaving it shows no sign of life apart from the LEDs and spinning HD.

There is no obvious way to get it to start. Just keep repeating trying to turn it on and eventually it'll work, sometimes with a few goes, sometimes 20 or more.

Aside from that, it runs fine, and the screen flickering thing has actually mostly gone now.

Desktop

Desktop died today. I was using it and it just went off like there was a powercut, with no warning. I checked the lights and power was on. Tried again and it powered up for a few seconds then just died again.

I assumed overheat (although wasn't doing anything heat intensive and have a really cool case with loads of fans), so took off all the side panels and let it cool. I then tried to power it up again.

I now get the mem test done, and the HD/Sata devices connected, and then it says "System boot fail". It gives me two options F1 to continue or F8 for boot setup. No keyboard input works, so I can't select these options or the other boot options that are presented right at the start.

I've tried inserting the Win7 CD but it won't boot from it or even read it before I see the boot fail. So I have no means of providing any input at all to even play at fixing this one.

Any suggestions on either? I'm pretty fecked considering I was literally about to take some freelance software dev work!!

It's not been my day, aside from winning the Euromillions last weekend, but not sure how that'll help me.

plugging your laptop into the external monitor to see if it's jut the screen not booting?

Or borrow my old bag of crap Tower if you're desperate for anything that cranks along.

[DJ123]

run diagnostic tools on both and find out what the issue is

[Fallout]

Originally Posted by Spank86

plugging your laptop into the external monitor to see if it's jut the screen not booting?

That's a good idea, though I suspect if it's GPU related, it wouldn't work on an external monitor. But perhaps there is some communication between the GPU and LCD which is failing. Worth a try.

Job's help on the other hand was about as useful as a squirrel in a handbag. Do you mean for the desktop or laptop? What diagnostic tools? How do I run them?

[DJ123]

Originally Posted by Fallout

Job's help on the other hand was about as useful as a squirrel in a handbag. Do you mean for the desktop or laptop? What diagnostic tools? How do I run them?

yes run diagnostics. on the net and on manufacturers websites you will finding testing tools for: RAM, HDD, GPU, CPU. It will run tests to check all the components and check for faults, a good one for HDD's is sea tools (by Seagate)

At work tomorrow i'll see if I can grab a copy of them from tech for you

Originally Posted by daddyjob

yes run diagnostics. on the net and on manufacturers websites you will finding testing tools for: RAM, HDD, GPU, CPU. It will run tests to check all the components and check for faults, a good one for HDD's is sea tools (by Seagate)

how would one run these tools without a working PC or laptop?

[DJ123]

With a PC you would install the components into that of a working PC (component by component) to check.

with a laptop you could swap out the ram & HDD, the rest I am not too familiar with, hence why I do the selling not the tech, again I can chat to my tech bods to find out the procedure.

[muzikill]

Unless the laptop was the highest spec version then most will take a processor upgrade. Not the easiest to do. Gpu is on the mobo if its goosed then a reball would be a fix but not cost effective.

[Mauler]

Unfortunately it sounds like motherboards for both


Laptops have everything "on-board" these days, initially it sounded like a screen connection problem but if it won't output to a second display then it's most likely GPU which is either processor or motherboard chipset depending on the age of the machine.


The desktop initially sounded like the PSU had given up, but again if you're getting a "help something's ballsed" F1 prompt on boot and the keyboard doesn't work then it's something more serious. The PC's BIOS looks after USB inputs so IMO if the PC isn't responding to the keyboard at that initial stage of booting up then either the motherboard is knackered (seems likely given the power issues also) or the PSU or CPU are on their way out and have somehow reset the BIOS config, which might've disabled legacy USB keyboard support stopping your keyboard from doing anything useful. Another keyboard may help test that just to get into the PC's BIOS but I'd go with motherboard again

[Fallout]

Ball bags! Yes, the mobo does sound like the culprit for the desktop. The compo is fairly old, so perhaps overheated and cooked something on it. It was built with top components back in the day, but it's had a lot of use.

I'll try and find another keyboard for the desktop and see if that helps. I am using a wireless one, which obviously makes it difficult to confirm whether there's an issue with the keyboard or not (I have changed batteries and reconnected). I'll see if I can source a normal USB one.

As for the lappy, it still works perfectly fine. I probably need to have another bash at getting inside it to see if anything is loose after it's rhino charge. I'll try the secondary monitor trick first though.

Thanks for the thoughts gents!