Laptop will only boot BIOS. Nothing else!

Firann

Firann

Firann

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3 Feb 2009
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I have an Acer 5739G (bought it from OcUK back in October) and toady while playing WoW and on TS with some friends, the sound started going choppy, the windows and game responsibility got VERY choppy so i had to hard reset my PC. I always have high temps when playing games even though i have a Zalman ZM-NC1500 cooler. In fact on the left side where you rest your hand, its become darker from the normal light grey color, due to all the heat.

I restarted the laptop, however after restarting it, i get the "_" before the windows logo appears to show loading of the OS but nothing happens. It just stays there, a blank screen.

The HDD light stays lit up all the time during this period.

I tried booting through CD. The cd loads the setup from CD but as soon as it has to load the installer screan it just stays at the windows logo doing nothing.

I thought that maybe my HDD died but when i go in bios (it works without a problem) the HDD is there. The main tab lists 4094 MB memory so it recognizes those aswell...

I can't figure out what the problem is.
 
Probably obvious but have you let the laptop cool down before trying to boot it again? If it gets as hot as you say it does, and you haven't given it time to cool down, its not going to boot if overheating is the issue.
 
Yeap i let it cooldown for about 15-20 mins... I am letting it cooldown now aswell and will try to start it up tomorrow. Just want to have all my bases covered.
 
best bet would be to run some diagnostics on the memory and hard drive.
although they show up in the bios, that only means the system recognises that they are there, it wont directly report a fault.

try and get a boot cd of memtest86+ for free.
and for the HDD, try and get the manufacturer's hdd test disk to boot to, or alternatively, give the seagate seatools one a go. it checks all types of hdd (although only repairs seagate and maxtor)

best bet is to rule out those two, if in fact as Zyaphear has said, it is cool when restarted.


atocp
 
Quick update... It seems that i can boot the windows installation CD, and if i go into recovery it recognizes the HDD.

The first time i loaded it it said i had start up problems and to fix and restart. Still does boot up.

Could it just be a problem with the installation after all? I don't know what might have caused it though since the system has been running ok for more than 4-5 months (last clean install).

Doing the memory diagnostics from there as i don't have any CD;s lieing around to make the boot disks for the aforementioned tools.
 
Sounds like the HD may overheated and crashed the OS.
Once you got windows recovered I would do a HD check and see what it comes out with.
Suppose it could have been a memory error/write cache, but that would not expect it to junk your OS, just BSOD
 
Well i fear for the worse...

I run the Seatools and the results are:

Short DST = Fail
LONG DST = Fail
SMART = Pass
Short Generic = Pass
Long Generic = Fail

... I assume this means that the disk is pretty much dead due to the DST failing... So what do i do now? RMA the whole laptop or just the HDD? Alternatively i guess i could just buy a new HDD myself?
 
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Just buy a decent HD imo.
You might get to RMA the HD in there direct, but sounds silly to send the whole thing back now you know what is at fault.
 
I just did the seatools test right before ordering a WD Black Scorpio and the HDD now passes them. I'm sceptical now if its fixed now or is it just temporary signs that the HDD may faulter again soon.
 
An annoying trait of Seatools is if you scan again, it will "ignore" the faults that it found the first time because it considers then repaired from the first scan. So it's safe to assume that the hard drive is still faulty. I did this myself on my fathers PC, first scan found faults, second scan passed the hard drive. However, using Crystal Disk Info told me that the hard drive had a lot of bad sectors, and replacing the drive has sped up the pc considerably.
 
The PC getting choppy like that usually happens due to either the northbridge controller overheating or delayed write failure on the HDD. Both of which can result in a corrupt OS on a sudden shutdown. Does sound like the HDD has died due to overheating.
 
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