Will not load and shuts down during bootup

Ok, so first off, I apologize if this is in the wrong section. Second, I don't remember all the specs on my laptop since its been so long since I've messed with it.

I have an iBuypower custom built laptop running an AMD athlon 64 X2 processor and (if I remember correctly) 2gb of Corsair memory.

Earlier this year, I got a virus on it that I couldn't get rid of, so I decided to format it. After I started taking stuff off of the comp that I wanted to save, it started randomly shutting down and it only got worse when I tried to format it. Sometimes it will show the initial MSI Megabook screen and then just shut off immediately after. Other times it will shut off in the format process, during the install process and whatnot.

I'm not sure what the problem is and I don't have a ton of money to throw at it to just see if something will work. I've considered maybe the memory went bad, maybe the hard drive, but I'm not sure. I'm not much of a hardware guy, I know more about the OS's than anything. So does anybody have an idea of what might be causing the problem here if it is the memory (I saw that in another thread on here when I searched) or what?

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Joe
(again, sorry about not being able to give all the specs, but I honestly don't remember them all)

 

What comes to my mind is overheating. Is the pc heat-sinks clogged/dirty?

I would go into the bios and check temps.

 

Well if you rule out overheating the second thing that springs to mind is a faulty battery,battery connector or faulty charger,I'd stick a test meter on the battery "tape the probes to the contacts" and jiggle it about to check for loose connections,do the same also with the power supply,check your battery connectors on the battery and inside the laptop protrude the same length,if not just bend them out slightly to ensure contact,check your charging light isn't flashing on and off when you pick up the laptop and move it around.

If the laptop turns off before the boot sector is accessed or without the hard drive connected that may rule out the hard drive"not definitely."

Modern laptops are usually SATA so you can connect them directly to a desktop comp,connect the SATA cable and molex power,run diagnostic software with the drive connected as secondary in a desktop computer.

Click the SMART tab,select your hard drive,they should all be green.
http://www.majorgeeks.com/SpeedFan_d337.html

Now try and format the drive while its connected as a secondary drive to see if it stops at any point,slow format,if it passes all these tests you can almost positively rule out the hard drive.

While this is running have your laptop powered up without the harddrive connected,first try with just the battery,then just the charger,then with both to see if it restarts,if its doesn't after leaving each on for a couple of hours it would point to the harddrive,or less likely another component overheating as the workload increases.

Should keep you busy and optimistic for a while

 

Ok, so my laptop works now.

This is ALWAYS my luck. Something happens, can't figure out how to fix it/what the problem is (on just about anything...computers, cars, etc), I ask somebody else for help or whatever, then I figure it out/it just starts working. I never posted the problem on here before while my laptop was dead. I post up my question and it starts working just fine lmao.

However, I am thinking that, like Rikky said, the charger or battery is faulty. I had it plugged in charging while I was trying to install Windows, had to move it so I disconnected the power cord. It shut down a couple times, but then after that it worked just fine. Its actually working just as good as the day I got it. Go figure.

As far as it overheating, I took the covers off of the bottom and made sure it was all clean (which it was for the most part) and tried to check temps in the bios as suggested, but couldn't find any temps. It does run pretty hot tho.

Here are the actual specs on it:

AMD Turion 64X2 Mobile @ 2.01Ghz
1GB ram
Nvidia Geforce Go 7600
MSI megabook board
60GB Sata 7200rpm hdd
Windows Xp home

Thanx for the help! Even though I ended up not really needing it, it will still prove helpful if it does this again.