Compaq Presario Won't Boot
Erehwon
appears to have died. It will not boot and the screen just turns a
blue-grey with an inch-and-a-half wide vertical black bar down the middle.
If I plug in an external monitor, I do get a legible screen but a normal
startup just gets through the Compaq startup screen and a black Microsoft
screen with a green block repeatedly cycling across a status bar after which
the screen turns blank. Trying the System Recovery or "repair your
computer" options gets me to a white progress bar showing "windows is
loading files" after which I again get the above Microsoft screen followed
by a blue screen. If I select "safe mode with command prompt" it progresses
though loading a couple of pages of drivers until it loads CRCDISK.SYS at
which point it freezes. Not sure if the screen issue and failure to boot
are related or separate problems.
I've tried removing the battery and reseating the memory as a shot in the
dark but no change. I have no experience with laptops or VISTA and no VISTA
installation disks. Does it sound like there's any likelihood of recovering
this thing or should I just resign myself to having to purchase another one?
If the latter, and since the disk drive appears to at least be reading some
data, can it be plugged in to my desktop to recover what's left of the data?
Most of what he needs was backed up to a USB drive but I'd like to get the
rest if possible.
the wharf rat
Erehwon <inv...@address.here> wrote:
>My son's Presario C700 (1.73 GHZ Celeron M with 2 GB ram) running VISTA
>appears to have died. It will not boot and the screen just turns a
>blue-grey with an inch-and-a-half wide vertical black bar down the middle.
Can it boot a cdrom? If you don't have a Windows cd try a Linux
one.
If it boots a cd, chances are just that the Windows installation
is hosed. If it won't you may have a hardware problem.
Barry Watzman
the LCD screen and hard drive are damaged in a way that strongly
(STRONGLY) suggests that the laptop was dropped. With likely both a bad
hard drive and a bad LCD, I think that the "fix" is a new laptop, you
can sell the damaged one as-is for parts to offset the cost. Please do
understand that a diagnosis without seeing the "patient", just from a
description of the symptoms, isn't guaranteed to be correct; but that
sure is what this sounds like.
[Yes, you can try plugging the hard drive into another computer to
recover files; it may or may not be successful (the symptoms suggest
that the hard drive is damaged but not dead; MOST files are probably
recoverable). You will need a USB to {SATA or IDE} adapter, about $10-$15.]
Barry Watzman
the other stuff she described was done with an external monitor? I
think that the laptop was dropped.
BillW50
Erehwon typed on Mon, 21 Dec 2009 03:12:49 -0600:
It sure sounds like the hard drive is bad to me. All of the other
possibilities is a bad motherboard. Unless you can find one cheap, they
are not worth repairing. And if you do find a cheap working motherboard,
that is the hardest service you can do on a laptop. As virtually
everything else has to be removed first.
--
Bill
Gateway MX6124 ('06 era) - Windows XP SP2
the wharf rat
Barry Watzman <Watzma...@neo.rr.com> wrote:
>Did you miss the point that she had LCD screen problems and that all of
>the other stuff she described was done with an external monitor? I
>think that the laptop was dropped.
What's that got to do with anything? The LCD is unreadable, it
won't complete the boot process using an external monitor. Next test
is will it boot from cd? If it boots from cd using an external monitor
we can rule out most components right away. It's got to be the LCD, the
connection(s) from the LCD to the motherboard, or as a distant third damage
to the motherboard that ONLY affects video.
OTOH if it won't boot from a cdrom it's almost a sure thing the
motherboard is damaged, or that more than one component (lcd and hard drive,
for instance) are damaged.
If it's A I'd take a shot at repairing it by removing the battery,
removing the keyboard, and resetting the ribbon cable to the LCD. If that
fails - the rest of the machine's fine right? since it boots to an external -
I'd try and get a top half (lcd and plastic and hinges) on Ebay and do the
swap. That's an easy enough bit of work, usually.
If it's B I'd think about replacing the unit since it's seldom
cost effective to repair multiple major components.
Put that in your buffer and push it :-)
the wharf rat
Barry Watzman <Watzma...@neo.rr.com> wrote:
>
>[Yes, you can try plugging the hard drive into another computer to
>recover files; it may or may not be successful (the symptoms suggest
>that the hard drive is damaged but not dead; MOST files are probably
>recoverable). You will need a USB to {SATA or IDE} adapter, about $10-$15.]
>
I've had great success at these kinds of recoveries by attaching the
drive to a Linux system. That's because you can force Linux to mount
a damaged file system and work with it.
BillW50
Let's see, it works fine until Windows starts to boot up and then the
display goes. (could be either the hard drive or the video at this point).
Runs safe mode and all is well until it loads "CRCDISK.SYS" and freezes.
Now it sounds like the hard drive is bad.
Boots from the recovery disc just fine (no need to try a Linux CD now).
Although crashes when it tries to write to the hard drive. It is really
looking like a hard drive now and nothing to do with the video.
If it isn't the hard drive, it could be the RAM. As the data passing
through the RAM anyway and if that is corrupting it, looks like a bad
hard drive. If neither the RAM or the hard drive, bad motherboard.
Also no need for Linux to try to read the hard drive anyway. The
non-functioning Windows is already reading it. What do you think a
functioning one will do?
Besides telling a Windows user to fire up a Linux CD is a pretty bad
idea anyway. Since most don't know anything about Linux and they will
never find the drive letter anyway. <wink>
--
Bill
Asus EEE PC 702G4 ~ 2GB RAM ~ 16GB-SDHC
Xandros Linux (build 2007-10-19 13:03)
the wharf rat
BillW50 <Bil...@aol.kom> wrote:
>
>Also no need for Linux to try to read the hard drive anyway. The
>non-functioning Windows is already reading it. What do you think a
>functioning one will do?
>
Barry Watzman
broken LCD and a bad hard drive, it is very rarely worth fixing, e.g.
the solution is a new laptop.
Erehwon
"Erehwon" <inv...@address.here> wrote in message
news:hgne6j$13s1$1...@adenine.netfront.net...
> My son's Presario C700 (1.73 GHZ Celeron M with 2 GB ram) running VISTA
> appears to have died. It will not boot and the screen just turns a
> blue-grey with an inch-and-a-half wide vertical black bar down the middle.
Thanks to everyone who posted their suggestions. I guess I'll see about
locating a USB adapter for the drive first to see if I can reclaim any
additional data. Any point in running CHKDSK on the drive if
my XP machine can read it?
I tried booting to my XP installation disk but, after getting to the screen
with options to begin installation, repair install, or quit, (can't remember
exact wording) the machine appeared to freeze. Unable to select any of the
options.
I'm not familiar with Linux. I downloaded an UBUNTU .ISO file some time ago
to try on an old PC I have but never got around to figuring out how to
create the boot disk.
If all else fails and machine is toast anyway, I'll start digging my way to
the motherboard and check the ribbon cable to the screen and see what other
damage might be obvious. If nothing else, the surgery should provide some
education. The other problem I have is lack of disks. Even if I can get
the screen back to normal and replace the drive (assuming it's bad), I don't
have any way of restoring system. Did the Presarios ship with the Windows
and driver DVD's, or a separate restore partition, or are you just out of
luck without a drive image?
the wharf rat
Barry Watzman <Watzma...@neo.rr.com> wrote:
>The point is that once you have a slightly older laptop with both a
>broken LCD and a bad hard drive, it is very rarely worth fixing, e.g.
>the solution is a new laptop.
>
Naturally :-) I disagree.
If the system meets your needs there may be reason to keep it.
It may have ports you need, or you may have invested enough in accessories
(batteries etc.) to make it worthwhile, or you may not be able to replace
it with a unit of equal quality (for instance, there's nothing like the
old thinkpad keyboards available on the market today, even from lenovo).
The LCD might run as much as $100. The drive can be replaced for
50. To make it work you need to do the repair yourself, but an lcd swap
is easy and so is a hard drive.
Just my 2 cents.
Barry Watzman
and they don't come with disc media (often you can make your own using
the restore partition). The restore partition may actually be good.
There is some function key sequence for booting into the restore
partition instead of the normal partition.
The cable to the LCD usually is not a flat cable but rather a more
conventional cable made up of real wires (not always, but usually).
There probably isn't much point in running chkdsk, and, in fact, doing
so may diminish your chances of recovery. Basically, you don't want to
do ANYTHING that WRITES to the drive.
You can find a USB to {SATA or IDE or both, as you want and need}
adapter on E-Bay or at most computer parts places. An inexpensive
external USB case also has what you need. $10 to $15 is all it should
cost (possibly even less than $10).
~misfit~
damage to the machine. However I think that there's a possible other option.
I know that coincidences are very rare but I'm wondering if the obvious
problems with the HDD (and perhaps the RAM, maybe even the southbridge) are
heat related. (Kids seem to not understand that you simply can't put laptops
on beds etc where cooling ports get blocked.)
Now, this scenario works quite well until we consider that the LCD appears
to be shot but it's possible to get a signal on an external monitor.
(There's a slim chance that the heat got to the LCD as well.) That's where
the coincidence (or frustration) comes in. The GPU can't be heat-damaged or
there'd be no pic on the ext monitor. Do some laptops have two 'GPUs' for
external and internal display or is that just the way it appears in device
manager?
Either way I'd put the HDD into a USB enclosure and rescue as much data as
possible (hopefully most, especially if it's kept cool) and the treat the
laptop as a 'project'. If possible I'd test that LCD in a similar machine
ASAP. The HDD is likely damaged (unless he gets lucky and it's only the
machine RAM, 'lucky' depending on relative prices of RAM and HDD and the
value of the data...)
--
Cheers,
Shaun.
"Give a man a fire and he's warm for the day. But set fire to him and he's
warm for the rest of his life." Terry Pratchet, 'Jingo'.