Laptop won’t boot.

_Brian

On the off chance that someone could help.

I’ve an old Samsung laptop here and I wanted to try a Tiny11 install on it to see if it would work and maybe be useful.

however when I tried it won’t boot. The fan comes on, I hear the hard drive make a sound but it just sits there, blank screen and fan running.

I opened and reseated ram, tried booting with each individual 2gb but no good.

Reseated the hard drive and optical drive.

checked connections to the board.

changed the bios battery.

nothing !

is there anything else I could try before moving on ??

Mickb

Hi,

Does anything logo etc come up on the screen? Can you get into the BIOS setup?

MiCk B. :-)

DopeTech

If anything plugged into usb ports, remove them and boot again.

_Brian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121663779#Comment_121663779

No never gets to bios

_Brian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121663974#Comment_121663974

Nothing plugged in.

Mickb

Hi,

Can you connect to an externals screen? Laptop screen could be busted.

MiCk B. :-)

One eyed Jack

What model is the laptop? Are there any beeps or lights patterns on the Caps Lock or Num Lock keys when you try to boot?

I had something similar with an HP laptop about three weeks ago, turned out the cause was a bad BIOS update. I got lucky that the laptop motherboard had a backup BIOS and was able to restore it - laptop booted fine once the BIOS was restored.

_Brian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121664648#Comment_121664648

That’s possible and I’ll do that.

_Brian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121664847#Comment_121664847

No beeps or otherwise... there is an led that would have signified "activity" but its dead all the time... I tried the function keys as I started in the hopes that it would boot into a bios menu but nothing..

_Brian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121664648#Comment_121664648

External screen didnt work.. Actually its sending the VGA monitor into sleep mode once its connected, not sure if that means anything..

_Brian

I presume the fact that I'm not getting to the bios screens means I couldnt get it to boot of the USB as I had planned for installing Tiny11, I've never done that before... I think I need access to the bios menu to instruct to beet from USB rather than the HDD

z80CPU

right, will toss this out anyway - does the laptop have an HDMI port? Can you connect a HDMI cable between it to your Telly and switch on laptop then, with the TV tuned to the HDMI port of course

newmember2

If you're not getting anything to an external screen it's not looking good. When you power it on, does it stay on and do any of the activity lights light up?

_Brian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121666848#Comment_121666848

Nope, VGA out only... Shes an older lady

z80CPU

Another thing

Switch it on

Wait for the hard disk activity to die down or stop.

Next, on the laptop keyboard hold down the Fn key and press the corresponding F5 / F6 / F 7 key for turning on or off the display. Also there may be a combination with external projection you could try.

_Brian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121669958#Comment_121669958

i tried switching between screen and output but nothing.

I think it’s not booting at all