laptop won't boot

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by BD2021, Jan 20, 2010.

  1. BD2021

    BD2021 Private E-2

    Hi guys,
    My friend is having a problem with his computer. It was working fine, he shut it down, and when he went to turn it back on it came up with a disk read error. Since then I have tried to boot from a universal boot disk and from a winXP OS disk that I have. Both ways that I have tried to boot, I get a black screen (completely black) when I try to load the OS. I have tried to let it go like that for about 15min to see if it was just taking a while to load, but excess of 15min seems like a long time to me. I was able to run a memory test, and it passed. I also tried to run a HD diagnostic test from bios and it says that the HD passed the test. I'm at a loss for what else to try. Here are the computer's specs:

    HP Pavillion dv1660se
    http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...=en&dlc=en&cc=us&lang=en&product=1845126#N931

    Any help you can offer would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.
     
  2. temple-Lobe

    temple-Lobe Private E-2

    Hi

    sounds to me like a HD failure which will require a new hard drive.

    is the data backed up? if so, just buy a new hard drive or take back to the shop if under warranty

    happened to me a few years ago and i've still got the hd collecting dust in the cupboard!

    if there is no back up of the drive you can get the data recovered because it is most likely a mechanical failure of the drive so the data will still be intact. You might want to google it and see whats what.

    I'm pretty certain this is a HD failure though, see what the other posts say and take it from there.

    Good luck
     
  3. BD2021

    BD2021 Private E-2

    Thanks for the reply. I've pretty much been able to narrow it down to either the HD or the HD connector, so looks like I'm ordering a new HD.
     
  4. sach2

    sach2 Major Geek Extraordinaire

    Are you sure the laptop is set to boot from CD/DVD first before HD? F10 during the HP logo and look for Boot Order in the BIOS.

    You should at least be seeing the HP logo for a few seconds on the screen when first powering on. Is the screen completely black the whole time or are you still gettin disc read errors?
     
  5. BD2021

    BD2021 Private E-2

    Yea, i had the boot order CD first. I talked to someone who had a similar problem and the issue was the HD for them as well. For some reason when I took the hard drive out it booted from the disk ok which i thought was a little wierd, but I did go into BIOS before that and make sure I had the proper boot order.
     
  6. jambo100

    jambo100 Private E-2

    sounds like the graphics driver has gone
     
  7. collinsl

    collinsl MajorGeek

    This is not relevant at all. This is clearly a hard drive issue. If it was the graphics driver then the computer would boot without one in safe mode.
     

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