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Yesterday I powered on my Compaq Evo N610c and it went to the compaq logo screen where I went into bios by pressing f10. When I was in bios it locked up so I hard booted the system by pressing and holding the power button. When I tried to restart the system nothing showed up on the screen (it was completely black) but the lights on the front showed that there was hard drive activity. After several reboots and retries (about 15 minutes of them) the light for the hard drive stopped showing any activity now (it just lights up for a second then shuts off). The one thing I noticed and it seems strange is if the DVD-rom drive is out but the hard drive is in the light wont flash. It only flashes if the DVD-rom drive is in. I've tried booting it up with both the battery only and the A/C and it both has the same results. I'm at my wits end and hoping that someone here can help me figure out what is wrong. Thanks in advance.
Last edited by majik73; 12-29-2007 at 07:06 PM..
Reason: wrong word
My guess is you hurt the bios and may need to reset it or clear the user area. On a desktop one would normally move a jumper to reset the bios. Not sure how that works on a lap top. Maybe you should contact Compaq. They have proprietary systems in place so may have a unique solution.
I have tried to contact Compaq and all they tell me is that I'm out of warranty. I know the hard drive, DVD-rom, and the fan dont seem to get any power (they dont spin, make noise, or anything). When I power it down or put it in standby I can hear something from the left side of the laptop (right where the processor is) but I know its not the fan.
Remove every single thing you can from the laptop and see if it allows you into the bios. That includes the memory, hard drive, disk drive, and any thing else you can. You might be able to even remove the wireless card, modem, blue tooth card, and LCD (use external monitor). After everything is removed try getting back into the bios. If you still can't get to the bios it doesn't look look for the system board. If you can get into the bios, start putting one piece back together at a time and getting back into the bios. Process of elimination.
Tek_freek: I've tried removing the battery and starting it. Actually which battery are you talking about, the main battery or the RTC (the online manual calls it that but I really think it's the CMOS battery) battery. I've tried to use their live chat once before and they told me the same thing (out of warranty).
jhittak: I've tried removing everything that I could and try getting into the bios but it didn't work. I've even gone as far as disassemblying the whole thing (it took me roughly about 3 hours to disassembly/reassembly the whole thing) to see if something might have come lose but that didnt work either.
I know something is worry and I will probably have to replace some part of it (thats why I got a partial refund from the guy I bought it from). I just dont know what part of it that I have to replace. With that said, what would be the symptoms if the motherboard or the processor was bad. Thanks again for the help.
Because so many parts are integrated on to the system board it can be difficult to determine the symptoms. The symptoms can vary quite a bit. I have rarely seen a laptop processor fail. It's just a single chip, although it could still fail. Some processors are even integrated on the board as well. If I remember right, a processor failure will fail at post. It either works or it doesn't. That should then give you a flashing light or audio beep of some sort. If it's just overheating that is a different story. I have seen WAY more system board failures. Their failure is way more common than any other laptop part except hard drives.
Remove all the cables including the power cord. Remove any removeable drives, cards, etc. Remove the battery (the one that runs the system when it's unplugged). Now, hold the power button down for about 20 seconds. After that, replace battery and try to start it up.
If this doesn't at least get you able to get into the BIOS then you could try flashing it if you can get your hands on a floppy with an update on it. If it won't even flash -- then it's probably your motherboard or your processor, but as a previous poster stated, it's usually not the processor on a laptop.
I suppose it could also be a bad stick of memory that's the problem. Every once in a long while I see a system that won't start up because it's got a bad stick. Do you know if you've got one stick or two? If you've got two, try removing one and starting the system. If that doesn't work, swap it for the other one and try again.
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