Compaq Presario Won't Boot
in [Laptops]
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From: Erehwon on 22 Dec 2009 12:12 "Erehwon" <invalid(a)address.here> wrote in message news:hgne6j$13s1$1(a)adenine.netfront.net... > My son's Presario C700 (1.73 GHZ Celeron M with 2 GB ram) running VISTA > appears to have died. It will not boot and the screen just turns a > blue-grey with an inch-and-a-half wide vertical black bar down the middle. Thanks to everyone who posted their suggestions. I guess I'll see about locating a USB adapter for the drive first to see if I can reclaim any additional data. Any point in running CHKDSK on the drive if my XP machine can read it? I tried booting to my XP installation disk but, after getting to the screen with options to begin installation, repair install, or quit, (can't remember exact wording) the machine appeared to freeze. Unable to select any of the options. I'm not familiar with Linux. I downloaded an UBUNTU .ISO file some time ago to try on an old PC I have but never got around to figuring out how to create the boot disk. If all else fails and machine is toast anyway, I'll start digging my way to the motherboard and check the ribbon cable to the screen and see what other damage might be obvious. If nothing else, the surgery should provide some education. The other problem I have is lack of disks. Even if I can get the screen back to normal and replace the drive (assuming it's bad), I don't have any way of restoring system. Did the Presarios ship with the Windows and driver DVD's, or a separate restore partition, or are you just out of luck without a drive image?
From: the wharf rat on 22 Dec 2009 15:00 In article <hgqtjb$u1a$1(a)news.eternal-september.org>, Barry Watzman <WatzmanNOSPAM(a)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.
From: Barry Watzman on 23 Dec 2009 01:07 Most HP/Compaq machines come with a restore partition on the hard drive; 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). Erehwon wrote: > "Erehwon" <invalid(a)address.here> wrote in message > news:hgne6j$13s1$1(a)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? > > > >
From: ~misfit~ on 23 Dec 2009 09:37
[top-posting fixed] Somewhere on teh intarwebs Barry Watzman wrote: > Erehwon 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. 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. > I think your son is not "fessing up" here. From your description, > both 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.] Hi Barry. To a certain extent I think that you may be right. Percussive 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'. |