R51 - blue screen of death, now won't boot

New user - be kind I had a blue screen of death, the general gist was that if it was the first time I'd seen it, to reboot, if not to do a scan disk. Unphased, I rebooted. Problem is, now it doesn't start up at all.

There's power, there's whiring from the fan(s?), and there's a clunk from the DVD drive as it goes to boot. But there's no picture, no beep and no evidence of it actually even trying to boot up.

Being up on internet etiquete, I did a search, and found this thread - the problem explained is virtually identical, apart from the blue screen of death. I'm hoping that it isn't a motherboard issue as, like that author, my warranty has expired. I've hardly used the machine, either!

So the long and short of it is just to ask, are there any other things that would cause similar symptons, or is it inevitable that it's a blown motherboard? I've tried plugging a monitor in, by the way, and no picture on that either.

Thanks.

 

could be the hard drive controller too, which is as bad / same as the motherboard being fried. What kind of warranty did you have on it? Make sure you're not entitled to a "free extension" based on the credit card you used to purchase (if you did use one) http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=1472726

 

your computer might be afficted by virus

 

Thanks for the replies. Sorry about the delay in getting back to you but I've been away then forgot that I made a post here!

I am in the UK so had a look at that thread about the "free extension" - also I used a debit card, not credit card, so am not sure it applies to me. Worth me looking into though.

Regarding the virus - perhaps - I have hardly used the machine though which is annoying, and it would be really bad luck for it to be wrecked by a virus so early on. Any idea what viruses would have that effect, or better still how I could go about dealing with?

I suspect it is a motherboard issue though, or the harddrive controller. Is this a common thing with IBMs? If I need to buy a new computer it kinda puts me off!

 

There are several possibilities: bad hard drive, bad motherboard, bad RAM. Can you see the hard drive in the BIOS setup utility? You can usually get here by pressing F1 when you turn on the computer. To check if it's the RAM you can swap RAM modules and try to boot again.

I suggest that you connect the hard drive to a desktop to (a) check if it still works and (b) save your data, if possible. You can find instructions for this on the Web. Here is one page that might help:

http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-1035_11-5160538.html

You may just have to buy a new hard drive and reinstall all software. If you were able to retrieve the data from the old drive you can then copy it back to the new drive.

 

Is this at the very start of turning the laptop on, as in the few seconds of you pressin ghte on button? If so, i think this has more to do with the Bios, or maybe a more serious motherboard problem. I think the idea of a hard disk problem wouldn't satisfy the problem. The motherboard looks for the hard disk in POST, so if it was that, the probalem would come later on, maybe 10/20 seconds into the start up. Please don't get me wrong, the hard disk could still be causing this but, i don't see why it is.

If there is a boot up, by that i mean writing, and system specification displayed on the screen, then i think that a hard disk may rightly be the problem. It may also be a RAM problem. As Fred has said, try to takle one RAM module out, and try to boot.