Tecra 8100 - dying - dead?

Hi Re Tecra 8100, 650 MHz, Win98SE.
Has worked perfectly for 2.5 yrs until
two days ago when display locked. Had to remove battery and power down to reset. Powerd up and continued working. Froze again after a few mins. Ditto two more times, then would not power up - noise from the H/D then nothing. On pressing the On/ Off button I got short beeps at 1 sec intervals.

Following day worked perfectly for a few minutes than repeat of above.

Today, a short H/D access then nothing. Holding On/Off down gives the 1 sec beeps as above.

Originally suspecting a possible overheating problem I noticed that the fan appeared to be operating as normal.

Any ideas, please.

Plus if I buy a similar machine with a different processor / memory / op system, will it work if I swap my current hard drive, or is there much bios fiddling (or worse)

Thanks

Graham

 

It could be a bad hard drive. Can you boot at all to run a program to analyze it? If that's the problem, you could get a new drive, though for a little more you could get a new basic computer.

 

If you get another laptop to fiddle with and your Tecra's HD/other notebook's HD are both 2.5" ones, you could swap you Tecra's out into the other notebook and see if it boots. However, as Brian has already stated, it seems as though your notebook's HD is dead.

 

Thanks guys for prompt replies.

The reason I believe the hard drive is OK is that on the initial freezes I suspect the H/D wasn't in use (being accessed).

Secondly when I install the floppy drive with a boot disc and reboot nothing happens.

The screen is now completely blank - I feel sure I'd get a disk
related message, "Bad OS" or something like that if it was the H/D. Just a thought

Graham

 

Try resetting the RAM, because you might have displaced it? Meaning take it out with the laptop turned off, then put it back in. Has worked for me before...

 

check connection between screen and mainboard