Troubleshooting a Dead Laptop: Common Issues & Solutions

[Andre]

So I returned to my laptop (Compaq Pressario A900) after a coffee break this morning and found it to be off. I was quite sure I did not shut it down, Anyway, I attempted to restart it. After some initial startup noises it shut down again.

So hit start again toggling F8 safe mode, which informed me that it could not start windows. But there were several options, register restore - no luck, memory check - no errors, disk check no errors, So went thruogh all of them, getting error messages (address error for a file) at the moment windows should run.

In the end there was only one option left: reinstall windows (do you want to save data first? yes? install external memory unit! Inserted memory stick, enter. Nothing detected install external memory, other port, same effect, no data storage and lost the data etc.

So it was reinstalling day, and worse yesterday I cleared all the SD cards with dozens of pictures, now lost

Fortunately my main system, still somewhere in a moving box, contains the main data, but anyway.

So what happened? and is this common and what should I have done differently?

 

[B. Elliott]

I wish you would have posted it up here before reinstalling in case we might have been able to help.

By what your describing I'm having a little trouble understanding what the problem could have been. One of those things where i'd have to play with the system to see how far you can get before encountering a problem. How stable is the AC power in your house? Does it ever surge at all?

From the sound of it, something screwy happened with a critical Windows file(s), but it's a little odd that the system was powered off when you found it. Usually it will restart and idle while showing you options or just plain halt and idle when the error happens. On rare occasions you'll get the infinite restart loop. Fist thing I would have done is put in the Windows CD and run the disk check utility, then perform a Windows repair by again booting from the Windows CD and running the Recovery Module.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;314058

http://pcworld.about.com/magazine/2109p156id111652.htm

 

[Andre]

Thanks B.Elliot.

There is no windows CD. I had made a recovery DVD but it's dislocated due to movings. Trying to get online and discuss things, unfortunately, was most impractical without the laptop.

So I had to cope with the recovery partition on the hard disk which seemed to be working fine.

The AC power was not a factor, the power LED's were on and the battery was fully charged all the time. Yet, it had shut down and it shut down again on normal attempts before activating Vista.

So I thought I had to make a trade off between losing files or keeping offline, fighting, while obviously, the system had exhausted all its options.

 

[Evo]

Oh Andre, so sad!

 

[Andre]

It was not a happy day Evo

 

[Werg22]

You shouldn't have reinstalled right away, you could have used a Linux live CD to try to diagnose and repair the problem. The same thing happened to my dad with his laptop, and he made the same mistake.