Gateway 400sd4 PROBLEM

ok dose anyone know why my gateway 400sd4 laptop dosint want to load up windows? Ok i press the power buttion and nothin all it dose is the cd drive spins for like 5 sec and the fans just keep going and going.
so plez reply if u know anything is wrong that i can fix... TY

 

Is there a CD in the CD drive? Try taking it out.

Do you get any error messages?

Do you see the Windows load screen come up at all?

 

do you see any kind of spash screen? can you get into the bios?

 

Sounds like hard drive dead.....

 

Well this sounds like my problem, so let me give you a little more info.

I shut down my laptop (Gateway 400SD4) After running for about 2 hours, I plugged it in 10 minutes later to a car inverter and turned it on, everything whirred to life, but the screen didn't come on. Waited a few moments, held down the power switch for 4 seconds and it turned off, I then tried to turn it on and nothing happened.

I waited 2 hours to get home and plugged it in a turned it on. I smelled a lovely burned-component gut-wrenching "This is gonna cost alot" smell. I immediately unplugged it, took out the battery and opened it up to see if I could see what died. Nothing looked burnt, so I blew the amazing amount of dust out and put it all back together.

Now it turns on, the leds light up a moment to do their on boot check. The fans come on, the secondary fan turns off after whirring a moment just like it always has on boot, but the display doesn't come on (You can't even see anything on the screen, like you can if the lights are off but it's still showing something) and the hard drive led never lights up, so it's not booting past whatever subconcious routines are in the bios.

Any ideas?

 

I would not recommend taking a laptop apart just like that if you don't have experience of it before. Those things are a bit more advanced than a stationary computer. Best thing would be to turn to a shop and ask for them to locate the problem and quote you what the cost to fix it would be. It should only cost you about $50 tops. If it's a reputable shop it's worth it. It could be like whatever so it's kind of hard to comment on this. You probably don't have any parts to swap either so testing's gonna be a bit difficult.

My guess is memory is memory or psu issue

 

I've got some experience in that department, I'll leave it at that unless you want the long story.

I do have ram to swap it out with, and I did, and it did nothing. The problem with the DC>DC converter is that it's built onto the motherboard so replacing it is going to be 2/3rds the laptop price.

 

hence the 'you'd be better off having it at a shop for testing'
all you need is for them to locate the problem then you can fix it yourself if you think it's worth it. unless you have all the necessary hardware they're probably best equipped to test each part and narrow it down to whatever causes this. I'm only saying this because the price difference in laptops are so much higher, the parts are hard to come by and there are not too many ppl who knows how to troubleshoot it's hardware correctly. you'll probably save both time and money on taking it to a shop.

that being said I don't doubt your experience or your knowledge, I just belive you'll be better off this way.

 

I think I may be too. However, this is my first high-end laptop, and I got such a good deal on it i think I'll break even dividing it up and selling the parts. I was just coming here to see if anyone else has experienced the same problem before I did.

 

you did the right thing. unfortunally I''m not too experienced with laptop hardware, never actually bothered since it's generally just one board, a psu and hdd and if the board brakes it's usually goodbye. not sure but I don't think there are any laptop experts hangning around here. I suspect they would already have posted here if there was