i'm working on a laptop here (Compaq Presario V2000), and when i hit the power button the power light on both the button and on the side (the circle with vertical line through the top) both glow orange, and the disk LED stays constantly lit (orange as well). the fan on the underside (VGA? CPU?) spins for 4 seconds after hitting the button, then stops. visibly, save for the 4 second fan and 3 LED's, the laptop is indistinguishable between on and off. i don't even feel any drives or disks spinning. from what was described to me, i thought it was a virus affecting the video, they said it booted then went blank, and you could hear the sounds of XP booting. i was gonna throw in an ubuntu Live cd and run CLAM AV from the live environment (PROTIP: that way you can scan a disk you can't even boot up). what should i do? the CFL tube in the screen doesn't even flicker, this sucker looks dead if you don't see the lights
Have you tried removing the main battery and starting the laptop using only the power cord? Also, if you have the case open, see if you can disconnect the secondary battery from the motherboard for a few minutes.
removing the main battery doesn't change anything, and i'd have to basically disassemble the entire laptop to get to the CMOS battery.
Might not be a bad idea if the thing's out of warranty. Old IBM Thinkpads were notorious for parts coming loose inside, especially if you threw one in the boot of your car and drove around for a bit. If you need the service manual: http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c00444244/c00444244.pdf
lol, thats actually the pdf i downloaded already. i got to unplugging the monitor cable from the motherboard before i gave up. i just made sure it was seated and zipped it back up
This sounds nearly identical to what happened to my laptop just a day ago. Sister was using it and it "suddenly went off and was not rebooting". So I tinkered with it, pulled the battery, same thing, pulled the HD, same thing, moved the RAM to the other slot, posted w/out HD. So, shut down and popped the HD back in and it posted and loaded xp, popped the battery back in and all was good. It was a weird issue, but moving the ram to the other slot seems to have fixed it. Could be that, and hope this helps.
it has two sticks of RAM, i switched them, tried one in each slot (one at a time in the possible combinations), even tried it without RAM
It could be the RAM, but thats a long shot.... the possibility of both not working is way out there. But it wont post without it either... Hmm... Laptops suck for hardware issues, stupid integrated components! I'd say get your hands on a for sure working stick of ram and see what happens, its one of the few things that'll completely lock a PC up on boot if it isnt working.
