Gateway laptop - no power

Hi folks. I'm new here, and I've got a strange problem that maybe someone can help me with.

A ggod friend of mine has a Gateway Solo 9550 laptop that will not power up on battery, AC or both.

Things were fine until one day XP froze up on her and she had to Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart. Upon restarting, after the Gateway logo screen and just before the XP splash screen, the screen went black with a flashing cursor at the top left-hanf corner. It froze like that and she had to hold the power button to shut it down.

Ever since then, it won't come on with AC or battery. Battery is good, AC cable is good. No LED's light up when you press the power button or plug in the AC.

However, when you press the eject button on the CD-ROM, the led comes on and the tray ejects. Thats wierd, that tells me it must be getting power, right?

I've tried starting it without the HD, RAM, drives, etc one at a time to rule out a peice of hardware.

I called Gateway support and the guy had me insert a paperclip into a little hole on the bottom for 20 seconds. That did make some LEDs come on but the PC still won't come on. That was the extent of the Gatway guys knowledge on troubleshooting laptops.

Anyway, can anyone please help or offer any advice at all?


Thanks in advance, Steve.

 

sounds like your friend's motherboard may have fried. I'm pretty sure laptops work like desktop computers, in that if you get sufficient power, and the computer won't turn on, then it's most likely the motherboard frying. You can have gateway replace it, but that would probably cost money depending on the type of warranty.

sorry i can't help you out further

 

Thanks, yeah I thought it might be something like that. Well, it is still under warrenty until December, so I suggested she just send it in. The thing is though, She is very concerned about losing any data on th HD (pictures of her kids, etc) I know that most companies won't make any gaurantees as far as data.

If I send it to Gateway for warranty repair, is there anyway that I can remove the HD and retreive the data onto another system? I don't own a Gateway laptop myself, and I know most laptop HDs are a proprietary design. Is there some device in which I can pop in the HD and connect to another system via USB or Firewire to offload all of the data before sending the laptop off?

I haven't asked, but I imagine they would require the HD be in the laptop before I send the system to them.

Thanks again.

 

yeah, it'd be a good idea to leave the hard drive on the laptop.

i don't know how gateways open, but if you look on the bottom, there might be panel covers all over the laptop. find one that's around 3x4.5 inches. unscrew it and inside will be the hard drive. in order to interface with the hard drive, you'll need to either find another laptop, or you can get an external enclosure such as http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=17-145-329&depa=0

good luck

 

Just so that you know, Gateway's sevice can be extremely slow. So, if you can get at your HD, and get the information off of it, DO IT! It could take over 2 months (as it did for me) to get that laptop replaced.

 

The EXACT same thing just happened to my Gateway Solo 9550; I was using it with XP, the system froze up with a black screen, and I had to forcibly shut it down by holding the power button.

Then to get the green power lights to go out, I removed the battery. But now it won't power on no matter what I do (battery or AC), but just like you, the good ol' DVD drive will eject when I click the button.

But the warranty has long since expired.

Anyone know what to do?

Thanks!!

-Dave