Laptop wont do anything.

[richie1913]

Hi all,a friend of mine has been having trouble with his laptop for a while now,and lately the first thing that happens when you boot up is a page appears saying that the hard-drive is about to fail back up all data and replace,press f1 to continue,or something along those lines.So he knew he would have to replace the hard-drive very soon,today the laptop will not boot up at all,nothing happens except for a orange light that flashes two or three times on the front of the laptop,would this be because the hard-drive has finally failed or some other problem,he doesnt want to spend money getting a new hard-drive if thats not the cause.
Thanks Richard.

[Kees]

So he did not heed the warning to back-up everything? He probably has to buy a new HD, re-install the OS, make the old HD external, and see if something can still be saved.

[Rush]

I agree with Kees, hope he backed everything up. My first inclination is tell him to buy a new hdd. Even if thats not it, which it may well be, he's gonna need one anyway.
It's odd that he wouldnt even get a bios screen and a non system disk error of some sort. Even if the hdd is totally dead the computer should operate and return some kind of message and give a bios screen if that hasnt been disabled.

[richie1913]

Thanks for replies,no he didnt back up anything,he has had nothing but trouble since he bought It,new.About the bios screen,thats what I thought as well,but all that happens is a orange lights blinks twice then nothing,power light does not go green even.
It got sent of to the company that he bought from because the usb slots were all slack,and when it came back thats when the error message started,looks like its going back again.Thanks again.

[Kees]

It may be a long shot, but what he could do is taking the battery out and just run on the AC power adaptor, then do the reverse and boot with only the battery in, all the time watching whether it makes any difference. The power may have gone short-circuited and/or a fuse (?) blown. It would be a rare thing, but some "repair"-services are capable of extraordinary results.

[bogdan_mihai58]

It may be a long shot, but what he could do is taking the battery out and just run on the AC power adaptor, then do the reverse and boot with only the battery in, all the time watching whether it makes any difference. The power may have gone short-circuited and/or a fuse (?) blown. It would be a rare thing, but some "repair"-services are capable of extraordinary results.

HAHAAAA....LOL, you're right!

[BTOR]

How old is the laptop

[richie1913]

Coming up on 2 years,but it has always had problems from day 1,power supply problems at first,got sent off/back/off/back,then it was the dvd drive,got sent off/back,then it was the usb ports not working,all slack so away it went again,nothing else wrong with it apart from that,by mistake a 3g usb dongle was sent with it,the kind that has a little hard-drive on it to hold the installation program and drivers,when the laptop came back this time all that had been done to the usb ports was,well by the looks of them they
had just been poked and proded with something to get them back into shape,and now the new problem,the hard drive,as soon as you started the computer up you would get that message from smart,this harddrive is about to fail please back up all your data and replace,plus the error that the ntds boot something was missing,so had to reinstall,nothing would go on the hard drive kept giving errors half way through the installation,but did manage to get ubuntu on it,they used it for about 2 week then nothing,we are up to the point when i posted here,the strange thing was,the dongle would not work either,not on windows or ubuntu,its like the drivers and installation program had been wiped from that as well,because i have the same dongle on my computer and i could connect to the internet using there dongle as i already had the drivers and program on my computer.The computer has now been sent back,they have asked for a new one not a repair,then again this will be the second time they have asked for a new one,wont hold my breath.

It would be a rare thing, but some "repair"-services are capable of extraordinary results.

You are so right kees,so right.

[mujahied]

dude just disable the smart in the bios the machine should boot up and if yuo are getting ntdlr not found you can restore that ntdlr with a windows cd
i asume yu running windows xp cause the new oss's as vista and 7 doesnt have the ntdlr
they have a different type of loader

[tangomouse]

would this laptop be a compaq c300? ,i have one and the same thing happens but no screen just flashing power led "orange" ,yes i checked everything even gave it a reflow ,just wondering if its usb ports because i overlooked those