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Hard drive issue?


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#1
karorose

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If a laptop does not boot up, is the hard drive gone? What I mean is if there is no action on the hard drive, but all lights are working that show battery, wi-fi, etc are on....did the hard drive go kaput? I can hear the fan running but no other sounds of activity to indicate the hard drive is even reacting. I removed the hard drive to make sure the connection was secure and reattached everything properly.

I can't diagnose the hard drive if it won't come on. Does this mean it's fried?
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#2
cheathawk1

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What exactly does the screen show? Does it just stay completely black? Does it show POST info? Does it flash a logo or anything...?
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#3
karorose

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The screen stays black, with no logo.
I had problems with blue screens this past week, and wondered if that had something to do with it. I ran tests on the memory which showed no issues or errors.

The laptop does the usual "lights coming on" thing" with one exception, the light that usually came on for the hard drive is remaining dark.
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#4
Alzeimer

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If you can enter it does your BIOS recognize your hard drive?
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#5
karorose

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I can't get into anything. The screen stays dark. Other than the little revving up it does when I first start the laptop (fan and assorted lights on the laptop), everything else stays off.
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#6
Alzeimer

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If you take out the hard drive and try to boot do you at least get into the Bios or still nothing happens.

A computer does not need a hard drive to start and unless the drive was the reason it was not starting taking it out will tell you if it might something other then the hard drive the reason it does not start.

If it still does not start it does not garantee your hard drive is still good but you will at least know the problem of not starting is not related to your HD

Edited by Alzeimer, 24 April 2010 - 03:38 PM.

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#7
cheathawk1

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You should still see some POST text on the screen. Are you able to connect your laptop to a different monitor via a VGA port? I know this is probably asking a lot but do you happen to have another computer you could put your hard drive into as a slave?
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#8
phillpower2

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If I may chip in, I would go with the suggestion made by cheathawk1 & try
connecting the laptop to a known working monitor via the vga port 1st, it
is a lot easier to transport a laptop around than a monitor, also have you
tried booting windows or a recovery disc from the cd/dvd drive?
See the link below for a laptop troubleshooting flowchart,
http://www.daileyint.../hmdpc/hard.htm
Good luck & let us know how it goes
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#9
123Runner

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I will 2nd (or is it 3rd) the use of a external monitor.

Nothing on the display would be a display/back lit or possible main board.
If just a backlit issue, then you would see something by use of a flashlight and getting the screen in just the right position.
You need to see POST 1st.
A total hard drive failure would be "no OS" or "no hard drive detected", but would still give you POST.
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#10
cheathawk1

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just to piggyback on 123runner's response, POST is the White words that display before windows loads up, it should list stuff like your RAM, CPU info, BIOS info, Hard drives (or say hard drive failure as runner said) and stuff like that.
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