Wife's Laptop Wont Boot

[SpaceBooger]

Four years ago my wife bought an Everex StepNote laptop (she is into the whole green thing) and yesterday it stopped working... kinda.

I can get it to boot but when I move it it locks up and freezes. Sometimes it will not boot at all and not even turn the screen on meaning I cant get to the bios.

I opened it up checked all connections and all seem fine, I did notice that one of the ram was not seated correctly and fixed that.
So I cant seem to find a short, I reinstalled Windows, but I am still getting only a 20% boot chance and locking up upon moving.

Any suggestions before we break down and get her a new netbook? (we are cheap and really don't have the $ for a new computer)

[BoringSupreez]

Try unattaching everything that can come apart, then put it back together. If that doesn't work, you could try taking it to a computer repair place. If you do end up getting another computer, try getting a used on off craigslist before buying another netbook. Netbooks are kinda useless, IMO.

[SpaceBooger]

Try unattaching everything that can come apart, then put it back together. If that doesn't work, you could try taking it to a computer repair place. If you do end up getting another computer, try getting a used on off craigslist before buying another netbook. Netbooks are kinda useless, IMO.

Tried that... cleaned everything but there seems to be a short or something... as for buying another computer she only uses for entering grades, typing lesson plans, and mostly for browsing so a netbook would be fine and cheaper.
Any other suggestions?

[Dylan]

The symptoms sound like there may be something wrong with your hard drive. I've seen bad connections do that before, but if you've carefully reconnected everything that's likely not your problem. Failing hard drives very often hang around the boot up screen, and can become sensitive to physical motion. This might be what you're dealing with, do you have a spare that you can experiment with?

[isiolia]

Have you tried removing some of the RAM, shuffling it around, that sort of thing? Might be a bad DIMM or socket.

Drive may be something to check too - if the computer is waiting on it to spin up, or it's only partly registering, it could screw up the boot process. Could try disconnecting it and see if the screen comes on consistently.


I'd second the "not a netbook" thing, if the point there is price. You can get much more robust CPUs in machines for about the same money. The netbook market has had a lot of stagnation - and with the focus shifting to tablets, there's not a lot of pressure to improve. A lot of the netbooks on the market are the same ones you could buy a year (or two) ago...for the same price. Meanwhile you can find refurb/closeout Core2 Duo machines or the like for similar money, or a lower end new machine for $100-150 more.

[SpaceBooger]

The symptoms sound like there may be something wrong with your hard drive. I've seen bad connections do that before, but if you've carefully reconnected everything that's likely not your problem. Failing hard drives very often hang around the boot up screen, and can become sensitive to physical motion. This might be what you're dealing with, do you have a spare that you can experiment with?

No I don't.... Man a new HD would be $50 a netbook would be $200... Hmm... the only thing that Im not sure about is that sometimes 2 out of 3 times I don't even get to the bios screen (where it gives the hd and ram specs)

[CRTGAMER]

When I move it it locks up and freezes. Sometimes it will not boot at all and not even turn the screen on meaning I cant get to the bios.

I opened it up checked all connections and all seem fine, I did notice that one of the ram was not seated correctly and fixed that.

So I cant seem to find a short, I reinstalled Windows, but I am still getting only a 20% boot chance and locking up upon moving.

Strange that it would lock up when moving the notebook. A ram was not seated, maybe accidently dropped? Does not seem to be the hard drive, but something else. Does the screen still show clearly during the lockup? Did you try plugging the notebook into an external monitor to eliminate if its the notebook screen?

It the notebook is bad and beyond repair, a good chance you can still recover all the personal data off the hard drive. Just pop it out and hook it up to an external USB adaptor and transfer the files over to your desktop.

[SpaceBooger]

Strange that it would lock up when moving the notebook. A ram was not seated, maybe accidently dropped? Does not seem to be the hard drive, but something else. Does the screen still show clearly during the lockup? Did you try plugging the notebook into an external monitor to eliminate if its the notebook screen?

It the notebook is bad and beyond repair, a good chance you can still recover all the personal data off the hard drive. Just pop it out and hook it up to an external USB adaptor and transfer the files over to your desktop.

The laptop was dropped on many occasions and often she would leave it on the end table where the 2yr old has been caught climbing over it... so the possible problems are endless.

I keep thinking a motherboard issue, but was hoping that it was just the ram then the HD comment gave me hope. Since it was used as mainly a workstation connecting to the files on the desktop pc there was no data other than bookmarks to save and the data on the HD was all good. I was able to reinstall Windows but as soon as I moved it after the reinstall it froze or rebooted.
Anyway it looks as if we will replace it, but I will try Chrome OS on a flash drive tomorrow (I left my 4gb one at work) as a way of testing if it's a HD or motherboard short.

Any other suggestions would be appreciated.

[Anapan]

You could download and burn to disc/flashdrive a bootable copy of Linux to see if it works outside the original operating system. That will eliminate the harddrive and it's installed OS from the picture to help determine the problem. Some other tools you could try are UBCD (Ultimate Boot CD) and HawkPE. Both are stuffed full of the best diagnostic software you can use to track down the problem - RAM daignostics, CPU burn-in/temp monitors, harddrive diagnostics, etc. The former focuses on low-level hardware and is mostly text-mode GUI/dos type stuff, the later has in addition to some of those dos bootable utility disks includes more advanced stuff, as it's a self-contained Windows environment (virus scanners and Windows OS fixing tools and utilities that can only be run from inside Windows XP and later OS). All of those can be found on your favorite torrent tracker - Piratebay / Isohunt / etc.

Se here for a list of some OSes that can be run from CD/DVD (and sometimes USB)

[ZenErik]

BIOS not loading up leads me to think that it is not the hard drive or at least not JUST the hard drive. Have you hooked it up to an external monitor to see if when the screen is blank that it is actually booting up? Could be a problem with a loose cable, LCD issue, inverter, or GPU. Also, does the fan spin when you press the power?