dead 9700...again

So i had givin my old 9700 to my g/f when i got me a new asus. When i say old its roughly 4-5 years old, and the battery is basically useless.

Well she had stayed at a friends house the other night, and apparently someone had unpluged the computer to plug in something else, so naturally it died.

the next morning she began using it like normal, her friend wanted to plug something else in and my g/f thinking there would be enough power in the battery to shut it down said ok. When it was unplugged it died immediately.

Now i cannot even boot to windows, it will get to the boot selection screen and no matter what choice i pick, i get a BSOD for a split second, then it reboots and goes back to the boot selection screen. If i let the timer run down, i get an error that says something about a corrupt or missing "root>\system32\ntoskrnl.exe.

Also, on a fresh startup i get a screen that mentions a cmos failure, and i have the option to go to the bios, or the boot selector.

the last problem i have, is if i try to shut the computer off with the power button, it will shut off, then restart, but nothing can be seen on the monitor. Oddly, if i keep holding the button, it will just act like im not and restart on its own anyway. The only way to shut if off is to unplug it and remove the battery (which im keeping out now).

The OS im using is the standard OS that came on the recovery CD with the media center, as i figured it would be the most compatible since it came with it. The CD does not have a recovery console on it either so going that route is out of the question. But like i said after a whole host of wierd issues with this machine lately im beginning to suspect a hardware problem.

Could an easy fix like a bad hard drive cause this?

 

yes it could, if you set the hdd to max performance and it has sudden shutdown then supposidly it can,

can you get into safe mode at all..... have you tried?

 

The error with the 'ntoskrnl.exe' could easily have been casued by pulling the power on the laptop, a few people i know have done it before it should be fixable by either a system repair by using the Windows install CD or by a format/fresh install of Windows.

The fault with the CMOS battery sounds like it may be dead and not holding the BIOS setting anymore, I had an old laptop like that, bugged me for BIOS settings/time and date every time i started it.

Regarding the last problem, that sounds really wierd, i had a problem similar to that on my M9750 but i found that becasue the inverter on the screen got warm, when i closed it, it was just close enough to the touch strip to activate it, causing it to boot again, Does it just reboot after it is shutdown? or when you close it ?

Hope that helps.

 

cannot get into safe mode at all, it does the same brief BSOD then the restart.

-is it possible to change out that battery? i take it its not nearly as easy as a desktop mobo.

-with the last problem, i dont think it is a problem with the monitor hardware, just something linked to this issue. It will stay on whether the lid is up or down, and will only reset when i hold the button. It only is blank tho after a reset of trying to boot. If i let it reboot on its own or unplug and turn it back on the monitor is fine.

 

so i just used the option to disable automatic restart after an error so i could see what the BSOD said, and the error im getting is "UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME"

hope that helps more.

 

Is there any way you can get hold of another install cd at all as a repair is the best option if you don't want to lose your data.

If you pop off the back cover it should be near the top right of the laptop, I haven't seen the internals of the M9700 but i know its similar to my M9750 its in heatshrink and wired to the board via a socket so its not as simple as just buying a C2032 battery and replacing it but it is very easily accessable.

Come to think of it you could cut the heat shrink and solder the wires to the correct terminals on the battery if you can confident doing it.

Regarding the monitor it could be linked to the motherboard having a dead CMOS battery i vaguely remember having a laptop with a similar problem i had to fix at work, but it does sound like an odd fault.


- P.S - Check the drive/s appear correctly in the BIOS (If you can, If its anything like the M9750 you can't do much in the bios so you can disregard this .)

 

actually i dont think the battery is the prob because my clock and date is correct in the bios...also, i can see the drive in the bios.

I put the drive in my asus as i did last time it crashed to save her data, but this time it started up and then got an error saying of of my disks needs to be checked, and to press a key to ignore it. Well, it doesnt recognize any key press and just counts down and freezes at one, does the same thing if i dont press a key. If i remove it the laptop boots like normal.

I put it back in and same thing, I even let it sit and its about 10 mins now and its still frozen at 1 second. looks to me like the drive is cooked.

 

Ahhh, That could very well be the case then =/ I hate having disks die on me.

 

Well i replaced the hard drive and still having issues. One time it froze when i went to format, then next time i selected format and the computer re-booted.

i believe i forgot to mention im also getting a CMOS Checksum Bad error during the initial check.

 

Have you tried pulling all power to the motherboard? CMOS Battery/Battery/Charger and leaving it a few minutes?
If you tried that and it still hasn't worked try reseating the memory.