Laptop won't turn on.

lukebolger

lukebolger

lukebolger

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Sorry mods, I couldn’t find the tech questions forum?


My wife has this packard bell easynote tj71, bought it new two years ago, has been running fine,


last week it wont turn on. Just the power light, fan comes on and I can hear the hard drive spinning- but nothing happens on screen, and no disk activity.

After some googling someone said re seating the CPU fixed their problem- So I took the thing apart (nightmare, those things are built awfully!) and re seated the CPU, and the ram, and the hard drive just in case..

Turns on! Great - I must have fixed it right?

WRONG!

Next morning same problem, wont turn on....

I have got it to start a few times since, and when it does start, Its 100% fine, runs smoothly, can shut it down and restart no problem, but when my wife puts in to sleep (closes the lid) it wont come back on.

I have tried taking the battery and cmos battery out - it doesn’t change things...

Its not too big a deal because I am going to get her a new laptop but it just bugs me that I couldn’t figure out the problem

If anyone has any ideas Im all ears!

Thanks!
 
Have you tried hooking up a monitor and powering it up?
You may have to use a key combo to activate the ext. monitor.

Might be a dodgy cable from the mobo to the screen.
 
Well, I haven't done that yet, because I'm pretty sure that isn't the problem. When it does work, and it hasn't now for three days, the monitor is fine, no matter how much I move it. Plus when it switches on, and there is no hard drive activity, and ie no noise of disk reading or activity light. It's like the power is only reaching the hard drive, the fan, and the cpu is dead. As it doesn't even get to bios, and it doesn't do anything.
 
Try hooking it up to an external monitor in case it is a cable issue. It's possible the motherboard is faulty but I don't know because it seems temperamental. I'd also suggest re-seating the RAM but as you have done this I'm out of ideas. I see problems like this every day at work but generally it is the motherboard.

Could be CPU if it doesn't get past post..

Hope you find out what causes it!
 
Took it all apart again tonight, nothing looks fried, everything was connected fine anyway -tried turning it on every way I could think of, nothing worked.

So I let it drain the power, by switching it on - letting the fan run it down, which took about an hour, then plugged it in and presto - boots up fine!?

Its so weird! Do you think it could be a battery issue? But if it was wouldn't it just not turn on at all, instead of half turning on?
 
now that its on again, is there anything I can do as diagnostics? I ran the memory check for an 30 mins, it got to 95% and I quit, so I take it the ram is ok.
 
lukebolger said:
Took it all apart again tonight, nothing looks fried, everything was connected fine anyway -tried turning it on every way I could think of, nothing worked.

So I let it drain the power, by switching it on - letting the fan run it down, which took about an hour, then plugged it in and presto - boots up fine!?

Its so weird! Do you think it could be a battery issue? But if it was wouldn't it just not turn on at all, instead of half turning on?
Click to expand...

You can easy rule out the battery by removing it and plugging it in and seeing what happens.
 
Right, Ive gone to power settings and made it so when you close the lid or press the sleep button it shuts down instead.
I too think it was something to do with sleeping, like it gets stuck in sleep mode or something, because like I said, now that its on, there seems nothing wrong with it, if it was a loose connection on the mobo, it would loose power or flicker in and out but its fine even if i shake it (lightly)
 
You could be lucky and it's just hibernate/sleep having a problem, I'd disable them on the laptop for a few days and see how you get on, change lid closing/pushing power to both shutdown instead etc.

edit:posted at same time as you, out of curiosity check that you have plenty of HDD space and even fragmentation isn't a problem (give it a defrag if it hasn't done it recently). Lastly check the eventlog for any HDD errors and anything unusual.
 
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