[Patch77]

Hi

My Samsung R700 is two years old.

It has Windows Vista. It has always performed very well and I have never had a single issue. I treat it with respect and it has never had any bumps or knocks, I also keep the system tidy and have never had an issue software wise either.

That was until today. I had been using it fine all morning and I shut down, went out came back a few hours later. When I turned it on I got one beep followed by two shorter ones. The laptop did not attempt to boot up after this time. The power light comes on, but there is nothing at all on screen. I have tried putting a samsung disk in and the dvd drive makes a noise but windows does not start and still nothing appears on screen.

So I suspect a screen or display adapter problem. This is a new situation for me, normally when a pc or laptop has a problem I have something on the screen to work with

So really I guess I am asking .... one long beep and two shorter ones ... what does this signify?

Is the hardrive affected? I am mostly backed up but still there are a few bits and pieces from the last few weeks I want.

Would it be possibe to repair myself with such little infomation on the problem?

Would it be economically viable to repair a two year old Samsung R700 or is it a write off?

If it is indeed a write off how would one go about recoverying data from the hardrive?

I have tried unplugging the RAM and plugging back in. I got exactly the same series of beeps and now further action.

I hope someone out there may be able to help me decide on whats best to do next

Thanks for taking the time to read!

Regards

[Neil Jones]

If it beeps, it's alive.
A beep like that will usually mean a defective stick of memory.

[SpywareDr]

If it has an Award BIOS, 1 long and 2 short beeps usually indicates a video error.

If it has a Phoenix BIOS, 1 long and 2 short beeps can mean a checksum failure.

[Neil Jones]

Award and Phoenix have been one and the same company since 1998. Therefore the beeps would mean the same thing. It is most likely a memory issue.

[Patch77]

Hi

thanks for the reply.

I get the same beeps if I unplug the hard drive as I do if I unplug one or both sticks of RAM. So do you think a new set of RAM might be all that's required? Or am I not getting the point.

On investigation having a repair shop source and replace the motherboard seems like it would not be worth the cost, as it is a two year old (£600 when new) laptop. Any thoughts?

I am assuming with an adapter it would be easy enough to link this laptop hard drive (with vista) to my desktop that has (XP) ?

Thanks again!

[SpywareDr]

If possible, try different RAM before going any further.

Yes, you can connect the laptop hard drive (with Vista) to a desktop (running XP) with a USB adapter.