No Boot Laptop & Recovery of Data

HP Pavilion DV2000, srv tag(DV2125NR)
Win XP SP2 (for sure, not sure SP3)

When power is turned on, all blue lights come on, fan turns very slow....nothing else happens. I have tried (power drain, IE no battery, and hold power botton for 30 secs) (Remove ram, turn on, reinstall ram) (reset Clock Battery)(external monitor) and obviously f11. All give same result (low fan, and just all the blue lights stay on)

I used a Apricorn adaptor, Drive shows as "Drive H" full sized. There are folders (persons documents) that won't let me access. Password maybe? (and I do not know password) I am trying to get the pics off this drive for her. They are Pics of her son that she has no copies of anywhere else.

Please Help

TY
Eric

 

when you turn it on, do you see the hard drive light symbol flash? I assume when you say "nothing else happens" you do not see the HP splash screen, or windows banner right?

Have you tried connecting the laptop to an external monitor to see if the problem is with the display?

 

The HD light - lights but does not blink( no lights blink, but they all light up and stay lit), and I tried an external monitor "(external monitor)"

No Win Banner, or post screens. No spin up from HD either, just a slow fan

 

For clarity, I take it that when you refer to the blue lights they are the ones as per pic in link below.

http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/notebooks/0,39050492,39259551p-5+,00.htm?

Although I have no direct experience with HP as I tend to stick with Dell, these lights are also referred to as diagnostics lights, see below for what they mean on a Dell (give you an idea)

http://support.dell.com/support/top...d=6B0066A0C5CC11DB99A653905CB61B0B&l=en&s=dhs

I am guessing that the sequence on your HP must also mean something and you could search for the answer or hopefully a user with HP experience will help out.

As regards your second issue, namely removing the data from the drive, I would suggest the following:

Remove the drive from the laptop and use an ide/sata to USB2 connector, to connect the HDD to another pc.

http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?item=N82E16812119152

If the folders that you refer to are not accessible under a windows envirmnent, then my only other idea is for you to boot a working laptop with a Linux Live cd and connect the problematic HDD with the sata/ide to usb connector and copy the info that way. I am fairly confident that Linux will not have any issues with accessing / copying those folders, in fact I would be surprised if it did.

Good Luck

 

TY
Eric

 

Thanks for the Linux tip, it worked,all pics are saved. now to see what went wrong with the Laptop. HP is bein a PUTZ and will not honor their BIOS update warrenty. It had the fan running too slow, and the BIOS fix speeded it up. Is there any way to test a chip to see if it is bad, except by swapping it out with a good one, or putting it in a working laptop? And is this also how to find out if the MB went bad too?

 

I think that the only way to confirm about the bios chip and bios version is to get another one with the newer firmware version on it.

Quite a lot of people will offer that service for desktop but I have never tried to get a bios chip for a laptop. They are not expensive, might be worth contacting one of these companies and asking them.

From the brief description of the problem you have provided, I am not sure that a new bios chip with the latest bios prog on it will fix your issue. But I guess worth a try as a new motherboard would cost alot more.

Good Luck

 

HP techie (chat program) Stated that the Warrenty expired Feb 09. and would not bend. How would you suggest or who would you suggest, as to how to "PUSH" them into repairing this. Shall I just pester them (pepper them) with hundreds of email's or call as many times as needed? They are a corp, money hungry greedy Stock Holders, what do they care if they tick off a customer?

At this point $125 or more for a "used/refurbished" MB doesn't seem worth it when you can buy a whole new laptop for $400.

Thank You all for your time. gonna take time to ponder this. BTW what Brand of Laptop would you recomend?