Laptop died....

Please let me know if this is in the wrong category,
But Im looking for some advice.

I have a Dell 9100 laptop for 1.5 years now. I was carrying it in my nice padded backpack (but on one arm) and stumbled on a stairway and fell into the wall and hit the backpack on the wall (comp was in the padding but still hit it enough to realize this may be the cause of my problem).

I do not know if it was in sleep mode or completely off. I carry it both ways. Next time I turned it on a bit later, it only gave a brief flash of the screen (every normal turn on, theres a brief flash of white and then dark and then picture of boot screen appears) and then dark and then nothing happens. The hard drive is spinning, I can stick a CD in and it spins (tried booting off them- doesnt work). It seems it just wont do anything in the way of booting. If I hit the power switch again, it turns immediately off. So once again, all I get is turn on, brief flash of screen and LEDs, drive spinning, and nothing.

I used to fix my own laptop on my last one and could take it all apart, and change stuff, I have taken this one apart to an extent and just checked for loose parts, etc. I see no damage at all. I am more unfamiliar with this one though and hesitated to take the WHOLE thing apart.

If anyone knows about getting this "deep" in a laptop and may have ideas as to what could need reseating or anything to cause this problem. I dont want to lose whats on the HD (havent backed up in about a month and a half) so Im trying to avoid sending it to Dell.

Is it perhaps the bios thats ruined from an impact? If it was just the hard drive, wouldnt it boot on the emergency boot CDs? Theres just some initial boot point its not getting past.


Any ideas would be greatly welcomed!!

thank you

dave

 

I would start by re-seating the HDD, RAM and CPU if you're up for it.

 

I reseated the RAM (if HDD means the hard drive, did that too). I got it apart to the point just before delving into the CPU access and got a bit nervous. I used to do this on my old laptop though so Ill probably get there I just dont know whats what on this one like I did with my older laptop. Im hoping its a loose CPU.

I was just asking what people here thought would be the "stopping point" when a laptop turns on, HD spins, lights and screen do initial flash and then nothing. I was wondering if this means the bios is gone and it cant get past that, or if the CPU was loose, should I see the bios screen at least at first? Just dont know the "order" of things that happen and need to be in place when you first turn on a computer.
thanks

 

Bios is likely fine. It's just a rom chip soldered on the board. No moving parts.

Try plugging into an external monitor. Maybe you can see if it's posting, loading windows, etc.

My first suspicions would be the screen or HDD. See what you can do about trouble shooting those.

 

if the processor wasn't correctly connected, then the boot process wouldn't get very far at all because commands wouldn't be processed to continue booting.

 

Just an FYI for everyone who saw this or has had a similar problem.

I took the laptop mentioned above apart. Took the heat sync parts off of the processor and saw that it is very well fixed in its place and cant come loose like on my previous laptops. These P4s are a bit more serious in their mounting. Anyway, after reapplying the heat conducting grease between the processor and the heat sync part that sits on top (apparently an important step - reapplying this grease),
I reseated the video card. That was apparently the problem. Not it works fine.

I thought if the video card was loose, it would still boot up, I just wouldnt see it. But this laptop did not boot at all - I know that for sure. Apparently taking out the video card will stop it from booting at all. Now all is good.


dave

 

most computers (desktop or notebook) won't boot without a recognized vid card or keyboard