Samsung V25 Boot Problem

My friends Samsung V25 has developed a fault and I can't seem to work out what's wrong. The PC will not go past the windows XP progress bar on startup. The progress bar will run across the screen a few times and then restart from scratch. The computer, if left alone, will just go around in circles. I have attempted a fresh installation; however, the PC will not boot from the windows XP CD. The CD drive clicks away, the light flashes, but the PC will not allow me to even do a reboot. I have also tried to change the boot order in the BIOS configuration but on start-up the PC says "No Operating System Found". Has anyone encountered this before? I would be very appreciative if anyone could help. Regards.

 

Ummm.... I see that this is around 4 years old and is a fire-breathing P4 machine (with 120W PSU option) which doesn't want to book from its optical drive.

It is possible that a strip-down, clean-up and reassembly might clear some problems. There's a very good change that the cooling system is getting clogged up and is not very effective. However, I also wonder whether the optical drive has reached the end of its useful life, but if this doesn't work then its difficult to boot up any diagnostic software (to test HDD or memory). Could you temporarily borrow an optical drive from another notebook?

John

 

Thanks for your reply. Would the Optical drive being faulty cause the computer to crash initially? I have had the laptop stripped to a certain extent and cleaned the area around the two fans which had a build up of dust. Both fans are turning though from what I can tell. Could it be that the CD optical drive has gone wrong coincidentally and that the initial problem was a cooling issue? I guess the only way, as you recommend, is to try another optical drive.

It wouldn't be a power issue? I notice the laptop light remains orange when the power unit is attached; however, this is probably normal.

Thanks again

 

The suspected poor health of the optical drive is probably coincidental. It's quite likely that other components are also showing their age and the boot problem is difficult to troubleshoot.

Perhaps one approach would be, with a known working optical drive, is to try booting with a live Linux CD (such as Ubuntu) which should have no problem getting itself running with some old hardware. If it hits a problem then you may get an indication of the nature. If Linux runs OK off a CD then maybe the HDD is showing its age.

That orange light may mean the battery is permanently on charge. At ~4 years it's probably on its last legs. In case you haven't noticed, the manual, etc, are available here.

John