Laptop Blank Screen

My laptop will not boot up. This started with an error message of Disk Read Error Occurred. Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart. That error came up 4 times then it went to a black screen...... When I press the power button, the power button lights up but the screen remains black. When I put my Heiren's Boot CD in, and try to boot up from that, I can hear it reading from the CD but the screen still remains black. I have tried to hook up a external monitor and the monitor still remains black.

OS: Windows XP
CPU/Ram: AMD Sempron 2 GHz
Product: Acer 3000
HD: 40 Gig
RAM: 780 mgs

I have removed the battery but still nothing.... I am at a loss as what is going on.......

Could someone give me some advice? I appreciate all of the help! Thanks!

Have a Merry Christmas!

 

Greetings, kodasmom...

Sounds as if you're computer savvy, with the tests you've already tried...

You might try re-seating everything: battery, hard drive, and especially the RAM...

Fans running? Make sure they're not clogged up and turning freely...as a follow-up to that: is the laptop hot?

 

Thank you soooo much! I reseated the ram and made sure the fan was working correctly. I blew out the dust in the fan and made sure the no dust clogged anything up. Powered it up and it came up to the error Disk Read Error Occurred. Press CTRL+ALT+DEL....

Now I get to trouble shoot this error. Do you have any ideas? I think I may just have to break down and purchase a copy of Spinrite and see if I can recover the HD...... I hope not though......

 

Before buying Spinrite, try pulling your hard drive, see if you can determine the manufacturer - if so, you may be able to boot to the manufacturer's diagnostics tools...

 

Since I am running Hiren's 10 it has HDD Regenerator on it.... This is basically the same thing as Spinrite. The drive had no bad sectors

I tried to access my drive via Mini Xp on Hiren's and it shows that I don't have any files on the drive or it is corrupted.

The drive is a Maxtor... I am currently running Powermax (Maxtor Diagnostic and drive testing)....... Hopefully I can resolve this with Hiren's. Thank you for your help.

 

No problem - let us know how it goes...

 

Ok.... I ran Maxtors Powermax and all of the tests passed. I did a low level format. Now I have another issue...... When I try to do a clean install for Windows XP Pro, set up will get to where the partition is. I had windows create the partition the first time. Will install the files, reboot and it goes right back to wanting to install files for the partition......

I have a funny feeling that my drive is toast..... Does anyone else have any ideas or am I right that my drive is toast?

Thanx for any help!

 

Hi there, just as an interested by stander. How do you reset all those things? Before I give up on my 1.5 year old laptop from gateway, I would like to reset it. It's dead, but no HD noise, on it's going out. Just as in sleep (like vidio driver gone) and won't go back on. So if this is like your issue, or if someone has some insight on it, please share. Thank you friends

 

Welcome wildflowergal .
Please go here http://forums.majorgeeks.com/forumdisplay.php?f=22 and click on the New Thread button on the top left. At MajorGeeks, the Major prefers everyone with a problem post his or her own thread, rather than add a problem to someone else's thread.
In your post, state the problem and model of Gateway. That helps anyone responding to figure out the hardware and also to see how restore/recovery might work on your Gateway laptop.

Also if you have connected an external monitor, mention if the screen remains black on it.

 

Ok, thank you. I did try and change the hard drive but still no boot up. I also started a new thread last night, but didn't mention the model. the hard drive company is: seagate