my laptop went dead , what happened?

[salsaholik]

I have an IBM a20m p3 500mhz win xp pro.....I was working on a document and alll of the sudden it froze on me. I figure it was only the application but it wasn;t. I tried ctrl alt -del and nothing happened it totally froze even my mouse pointer, Once i started the cold boot, it didn't want to start anything, I may it as far as the IBM logo logo where it asks you to f2 for bios, but nothing is frozen , I cannot troubleshoot anything my power supply is fine I couldn't hear the laptop trying to start but nothing. I then decided to take out the hard drive installed and decided to restart the pc to see if i can at least get into the BIOS, but nothing still locks freezes, any help ...thanks in advance.

[Memphis]

I had a similar-ish situation with my Dad's laptop, where it wouldn't power up from cold.

Bizzarly, the processor wasn't sitting properly. Took an entire strip-down and rebuild of the laptop to get it going proper.

So basically it could be memory or CPU, though I'm afraid I couldn't really say how to decide which for certain.

My suggestion would be to leave it off say overnight, let it cool down and see if you can get it to boot. If it will, download and run MemTest86 (Google it) for a while and see if it throws up any errors. Of course, it may have I'm afraid to say, just expired.

[salsaholik]

I waited a couple of days to see what happens and now I don't get the IBM logo anymore, still frozen, can't boot from anything, blank screen..;power still good...is it really dead now? :(

[QWERTY]

Do what Memphis said and take it apart then put it back together while reseating everything in the process. At this point you have little more to lose.

Of course, it's still under warranty, which I doubt since it's old, just send it in for repair.

[PhilEnfield]

Never leave your Laptop in a Blonde's bathroom :D

http://www.philharrington.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Never%20leave%20a%20laptop%20in%20a%20blonde's%20b athroom.jpg

[salsaholik]

Repair would cost me a fortune....how can I save the data I have on my hard drive? do I need a same IBM a20m laptop to recover my data? what to do? thx

[QWERTY]

Repair would cost me a fortune....how can I save the data I have on my hard drive? do I need a same IBM a20m laptop to recover my data? what to do? thxYou have at least two options. First, remove the harddrive from the laptop then...

...get only of those 2.5 to 3.5inch harddrive adaptors and plug it into a desktop system as a slave drive. Then just copy the data off.

Example: http://www.coolerstar.com/25to35hardri.html

Or

...Get one of those external Firewire and/or USB harddrive enclosures and install the harddrive into it.

Example: http://ttcomputer.com/vantecenclosure.htm


Personally, I would go the second route. Then you can continue using the drive for portable data storage.

[Dodgyfeas]

Sounds like its either your CPU or Mainboard thats knackered m8. I fix laptops for a living and usually when it freezes on the BIOS screen, its the processor or the mainboard has popped.

As for the HDD, you could get an external casing for it and connect it through USB2 to another PC and drag the files over.