Laptop will not boot up: black screen only

Hi. I'm afraid I might know the answer to this question, and its not good, but here goes.

I have a Hi-Grade Notino AS7200 Laptop running Windows 98, which up until recently caused me no trouble whatsoever. Then it started 'sticking' on closedown at the 'Please wait while windows is shutting down' screen. My novice approach to switching off was to remove the battery, as the on/off switch did nothing.

Yesterday, however, when I went to boot up the laptop, it just sat there with a black screen! The power light and hard drive light are on constant, but there is no sign of life.

I have tried 'Esc'ing, Ctrl-C, and booting with my Windows 98 boot-up floppy and the Windows 98 disk itself, all to no avail.

I suspect it could be either the motherboard / bios or the hard drive, but really don't know.

Can anyone make any suggestions?

Many thanks

Steve Radcliffe

 

Hi Steve: Did you find the fix for this yet? If not, I might have a couple of suggestions for you.

Suzette

 

Still not booting up

Hi Suzette - no sadly I'm still unable to boot up my laptop.
I've even tried taking it to my local store - only for them to say they don't fix laptops, and would I like to but another???

Any help or suggestions very welcome - I'll try most anything!

Thanks

Steve

 

Hi Steve: I don't know your level of computers but I can give you a couple of suggestions.

Can you get into the BIOS? If yes, make sure that the boot sequence is set for "floppy" first. (While you're in the bios, check that the power mangement is enabled.) Power down, insert floppy and boot back up from the floppy.

Take the battery out of the laptop. Plug the power cord into the laptop and the other end directly to the wall outlet. Try powering it up-without the battery inserted. (This will let you know if the battery is good or not. Sometimes powering down problems are the battery's condition. i.e. charging levels)

This will answer a couple of issues for me and then you can let me know what happened after you've tried the above. From there I can give you different suggestions, pending on the results from the above results.

Suzette

 

Still Not Booting Up

Hi Suzette

I've just tried again with the laptop, using your suggestions.

1. NO I can't get into the BIOS (it isn't even trying to read the hard disk, or the floppy drive, or the CD)

2. NO different with the battery in or out.

My knowledge is fair(ish), but yours is probably better! My gut is telling me the BIOS / motherboard could be fried, but that's kinda what I'm hoping isn't the case!

Any other help you can give would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks for the suggestions to date!

steve

 

Steve, do you hear the fan? If yes, there's hope. Have you tried the manufacturer's suggestions on their webpage, i.e. ibm.com, dell.com, gateway.com? Is this your laptop or company? Company, take it to sys admin....?.... Your laptop, tell me if you can hear the fan and if you tried with power from the wall "only ". No fan=no hope--fan=hope.....;(

 

Suzette, hi.

The good news is ... YES I can hear the fan. I tried with power from the wall with battery in, with just the battery, and with just power from the wall (battery out).
I've tried the manufacturers site (its a HiGrade Notino AS7200 laptop by the way) but although I can get access to download various drivers, and I know the laptop uses Asus motherboard / bios, not sure from there where to go, as surely I'll still need to be able to get INTO the bios before I can reload anything?

REALLY appreciate your help!!

Steve

 

Steve: Great that you hear the fan!!

Can you see the "dos" portion of the booting process before the
screen goes black/blank?

Do you hear two beeps or more? (one or two=you're ok, more=hardware fried.)

Try hooking up an external monitor to the laptop. Might be that you blew the adn that's why you can't see anything but black.


Suzette

 

Hi again, what type of hdd? Fujitsu, hitachi, ibm for the bios flash? Did you try upgrading the bios already?