Pavillion dv3-1077ca not booting

Just going to copy pasta my thread from the HP sub forum as I didn't get any responses.

Found an old laptop in the basement, I was just going to salvage the hard drive ( if it even worked ) but figured it might have a chance at life since it seems to be somewhat operational.

Plugged it in, I get the charging indicator flashing, press power and all the leds power on except for the HDD and I hear whirling noise ( most likely the disk reader ) then 2 clicks from the hard drive then repeats whirling noise and the clicks and the screen is black but randomly flashes white. On bootup the fan spins but quickly turns off and never comes back on. If I press power while disconnected the charging indicator turns on for 3 blimps and then gone.


Any tests I can do to see if the hard drive is at fault or it's a bigger problem like the gpu since nothing appears on screen?

 

The clicks only from the HDD and no HDD spin up sound probably means the HDD itself is dead.

 

I'm in agreement that the hard drive is likely dead. If the computer has an optical drive, get a bootable CD (Linux, memtest86+ ...) and see if it starts from that. You might hook up an external monitor as well to see if that gets a picture.

 

Retested it, confirmed that all the sounds were coming from the disk reader.
Open it up and..... it had no HDD...
I vaguely remember we gave it to a family friend to try and figure it out. ( Figuring it was something more then a hdd ) and he took it out, left the ram though.
Can I still test using the bootable disk/usb even if I don't get the bios to appear?

I don't really have a hard drive I can use to test...

 

Yes, absolutely - you'll at the very least be able to boot from your CD/DVD drive assuming you use bootable media. Your BIOS may also let you use a bootable USB device such as a hard drive or memory stick. You may have to set the boot order in the BIOS.

You should be seeing the HP logo appear on the screen when you turn the notebook on regardless whether you have bootable media inserted or not. That's why I mentioned the external monitor - you can confirm if the notebook works and the screen is dead or the notebook just doesn't work.

 

Ahh forgot to check, nothing shows up on both hdmi or vga.
Is there anything worth scavenging besides the ram and wireless card or just try putting it up on craigslist for someone to try their hand at fixing it?

 

After looking at the specs - it's really worth about nothing. Computers just don't hold value and become essentially worthless after being so many years out of date.

Your best bet would be eBay or craigslist - sell it for parts. The power adapter alone is probably worth more than the computer since that's likely to be more in demand.

 

Alright thanks!