If your laptop does not start at all or it starts but will not boot properly, it’s possible that you can fix the laptop at home without taking it to a repair center. Here are some troubleshooting tips for you. I’m not sure if I can cover all situation at once, so I will update this post as more examples come into my mind.
Situation 1.
The laptop appears to be dead. You plug the AC adapter but the LEDs (power light, hard drive light, battery charge light, etc…) do not light up and the laptop will not react at all if you press on the power button.
First of all in this situation check the AC adapter. You can test the output voltage with a voltmeter. If you cannot do that, find a known good AC adapter and use it for testing the laptop. It is possible the laptop appears to be dead because the AC adapter is bad (and the battery is discharged). If you know that the AC adapter is working properly and it outputs correct voltage but the laptop is still dead, most likely you have a power issue on the motherboard (or power board on some laptops) and it has to be replaced.
If you have to replace the AC adapter, make sure you use a correct one. The output voltage must be exactly the same as on the original adapter. The output amperage has to be the same as on the original adapter or higher, but not lower.
Situation 2.
When you plug the AC adapter the power LED and the battery charge LED light up. When you press on the power button the laptop powers up but will not start. There is no video on LCD or external monitor.
If the power LED lights up it indicates that the laptop is getting power from the AC adapter. Most likely there is nothing wrong with the adapter but just in case test it with a voltmeter to make sure the output voltage is correct.
Also try this. Unplug the AC adapter, remove the battery and wait for 1-2 minutes. After that plug the AC adapter ans try starting the laptop again. Sometimes this trick helps.
It also could be a memory related problem. Try reseating the memory module, just remove it from the slot on the motherboard and install it back. Try installing the memory module into the other slot (if it’s available). If you have two memory modules installed, try removing them one by one and start the laptop just with one memory module installed.
If the laptop starts fine with one memory module in both slots, but will not start with the second memory module in both slots, the second memory module is faulty. Replace the module.
If the laptop starts fine with both memory modules when they are installed in the slot A, but will not start with both memory modules installed in the slot B, the slot B is faulty and you’ll have to replace the motherboard or use only one memory slot.
Situation 3.
When you press on the power button, the laptop makes a series or short and long beeps and will not start up. There is no video on the screen.
In this situation test the memory module as I described in the situation2. Try installing a known good memory module. Most likely you are getting a beep error because of a faulty memory.
Situation 4.
You start the laptop. It sounds like the laptop is booting normally (hard drive LED is flashing) but there is no video on the screen
In this situation test the laptop with an external monitor. If the external screen works fine but there is no video on the laptop LCD, most likely there is a problem inside the laptop display assembly. Go to my previous post witch covers laptop video problems in more details.
Situation 5.
You start the laptop and it starts making repetitive clicking noise or grinding noise.
Most likely you hear this noise because of a faulty hard drive. You can remove the hard drive and start the laptop without it. If the noise is gone, the hard drive is your problem. Replace it.
If the laptop makes clicking or grinding noises and you still have video on the screen, you can run a hard drive test utility. I usually use Hitachi’s drive fitness test. This test is reliable and easy to use.
Situation 6.
The laptop boots into Windows ans works for a while, but after that it shuts down by itself without any reason or warning. You restart the laptop but the same problem appears again
Most likely it’s a heat related issue. Listen for the cooling fan, make sure it works.
Also this problem might appear because of a faulty memory module, try some tips from the situation 2.
The laptop still boots ans you still can see the screen, so you can run the memory test. I usually use Memtest86+. Run the memory test and if it fails, replace the faulty module.
Situation 6
The laptop starts normally but video on the screen has lines, some strange characters or other defects
It could indicate a problem with the laptop LCD screen, video cable, graphics card or motherboard. Here’s my previous post witch covers troubleshooting bad images on the screen in more details.
Related post: How to troubleshoot dead laptops.
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September 4th, 2009 at 7:08 am
Very good. I have a more complicated situation with my Toshiba Satellite M35X-S109 though. When I press the power button, I can only hear the fan run for several seconds, then usually no other response. Occasionally, the CD/DVD driver light up, at very rare times, even the Windows XP would turn up, it works perfectly fine if I entered the safe mode. however, at normal mode, it would freeze after a while, but recently it won’t freeze, only that when I turned off the computer, it would freeze at “The computer is shutting down” step. I will have to leave it on next time I turned up successfully. Any ideas what could be the problem? Thank you very much.
September 1st, 2009 at 8:04 am
Ramzy,
Did you try replacing memory with anther known good modules? It’s possible your memory is bad.
Did you try removing memory modules one by one if you have two modules installed? Maybe one of them is bad.
September 1st, 2009 at 7:45 am
Anne-Marie,
Sounds like you have a bad CD/DVD drive and it has to be replaced.
August 31st, 2009 at 6:19 pm
“Situation 5 You start the laptop and it starts making repetitive clicking noise or grinding noise.”
That is the one that most resembles the issue I have EXCEPT it’s not the hard drive. The hard drive was replaced & it still does it. The clicking is the CD/DVD rom drive. Boot from CD/DVD rom drive has been overridden to bypass it, but it still does it. I’m thinking it’s time to replace the CD/DVD rom drive, but I’ve been looking for more verification on this issue before I do that.
August 31st, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Hi,
I have a Dell D610 Laptop, and unfortunately it is not booting up. The LED light comes on, but thats all that occurs. I have removed the battery, and connected the AC adapter, and tried two or three other ones from another area, but it still does not work. I did also reseat the memory but still the same issue. Any advice? I did read through all these points, but none have worked.
August 30th, 2009 at 4:54 am
Good morning,i have a problem with a toshiba satellite l20-132.after restarting it i pushed f2 to enter bios menù but pc just frooze.I tried turning it off keeping power button pushed but no luck.after putting out battery for some sec will not work.I just see blinking hdd and cdrom led,but no post.It seems like pc is turned on but no life.
August 29th, 2009 at 2:04 am
hi,
my toshiba satellite will not boot up. message says cannot start the programme. press start to shut down. it is windows vista.
HELP!
August 24th, 2009 at 8:56 pm
Thank you for helping me with my laptop power problem. I removed the battery for a few minutes and reinstalled. The laptop then worked as usual. I would not have thought of this without your suggestion.
By the way, the symptom of my laptop was that I had the battery LED turn On but not the Power LED. This occurs only when the AC adapter is connected otherwise, if the AC adapter is not connecting, no LEDs are ON. With the AC adapter connected, when pressing the Power button to start the laptop, nothing happens. You may want to include this case in your above “Situation 2″.
Thanks again for your help.
August 17th, 2009 at 2:32 am
my Toshiba tecra laptop will not startup please help me
August 15th, 2009 at 7:52 am
Excellent point in here under Situation 2 that solved my immediate problem with my HP dv2410us not turning on.
Problem was: all top row LED lights under the screen turned on and stayed on at power-up. Nothing whatsoever on the screen. Other LED lights were not turning on or flashing (e.g. the error code ones by the Num Lock and Caps Lock. No ‘disk access’ light.
Tried but didn’t help: Removed all peripherals, (hard-) rebooted, nothing. Removed battery, (hard-) rebooted, nothing.
Fixed it by: Your battery trick. Removed battery AND the power cord for 5 minutes, reconnected power cord only, did not touch the on/off button, laptop powered up and booted successfully as normal.
Oddly enough: when I went for a graceful shutdown, Windows Update (for XP) started “installing update n of 10″ saying it would shut down automatically. One wonders remotely if this is unrelated to my boot problem.
Now: I go back to trying it with the battery in after a graceful shutdown/reboot or two. Then I go into some further diagnostics after making sure all my important files are off of it.
The tip sounded simple and procedural, but I appreciate you making a point of mentioning the order of the battery/power cord procedure. Saved a lot of time for me as I had gotten out the screwdriver and was ready for some deeper work.
Thank you.