I turned on my laptop today, but nothing came on the screen, and it was just black like it would be as if I didn't turn it on at all. Usually it shows my processor logo and makes a beep noise before it shows up my bootloader, but now it doesn't. I can hear the fan running, though. I tried to open the CD drive to try and boot with a LiveCD, but the CD drive doesn't open anymore even when it's on. The power light is on and everything looks normal, but nothing is happening and I can't even open my CD drive. I tried taking out the battery, RAM, and HDD then putting it back in, but still nothing.

What could be wrong?

Can you hear the hard drive spin up?

I had a laptop once that would periodically fail to start. One day, repeated attempts were unsuccessful and I started investigating. When I heard no sound from the drive, I shut it down and then gave it a good whack. It then started right up.

The next day, the IT support folks received it with instructions to replace the drive.

Dried up lube in the bearings was the (never proven) theory.

Yup, I listened closely and I can hear the HDD beginning to spin.

Does it have an external monitor port? If so, I'd recommend trying to hook it up to an external monitor and seeing if anything pops up on the external display.

You probably will have to force it to cycle the display mode to an external monitor, though the key combination varies between manufacturers. For instance, on most Dell laptops it's a matter of hitting Fn-F8 a few times to cycle through LCD-->External-->LCD+External.

If it doesn't appear to be booting or anything the problem may be more serious than a defective LCD screen, but it's worth trying--especially if it displays a hardware error/diagnostic code etc.


If you can't get anything to display, and hear no beeps of any kind you might be out of luck...

Hope this helps.


strick

Can't get anything out of an external monitor...It's a Toshiba Satellite laptop

I see you tried taking out the RAM in addition to the battery and other removable devices. If you attempted to power it on with all RAM removed and did not hear any beeps it's probably a system board issue.

I don't imagine it's still under warranty? If not, I don't have any other suggestions, outside of having it serviced... sorry it looks to have kicked the bucket on you

I say run memtest86 just to be sure the RAM is not fried.

I have exactly the same problem. But It is only with Fedora 10. I had F9 and did not had any of these issues before. This seems crazy as the problem has nothing to do with the OS but this is what I noticed. I have done F9 and F10 installation for few times and I really do not know what is wrong.
My laptop is Toshiba Satellite, too!

The solution I get is that I keep hard powering it off and on until it catches up a signal and run!!!
I hate to think of powering it off now. If I do restart I don't get the problem!!!


faizlo

Unless I completely misunderstood the situation, it's not even making it to the Toshiba/BIOS logo screen. He can't very well run memtest86 if the laptop isn't even making it to the point of checking for installed memory at the BIOS level.

Aw man...what do you think could have happened to the board that would make it not work all of the sudden?

Hmm, you're right, but I thought the OP only had these problems intermittently.

No, it worked fine up until now and it doesn't start up at all anymore

Hmm, in that case there's not much to be done I guess. If you want to open the DVD-ROM drive there's usually a pinhole that if you use a pin of paperclip on, it will open.

If there is usually a beep and now there is none, it would suggest some type of hardware failure. Maybe just take it to the shop.

No real way to tell, unfortunately. All kinds of things might have contributed: humidity, heat, cold, shock (dropping), phase of the moon--or it might just be a system board that simply stopped working (as happens with electronics on occasion).

As H_TeXMeX_H said, it's probably best to get it seen by a repair shop (presuming it's worth repairing and not replacing altogether).

If there's any good news here, it's likely the hard drive and your data probably are OK, unless the cause of the issue was some kind of electrical short.

So you probably can retrieve your data off the drive if you physically remove it from the laptop and connect it to a desktop machine running Gentoo/linux. If it's an older laptop with a Parallel ATA (PATA) hard drive you will need a laptop PATA-->40-pin IDE converter to do this; if it's a SATA drive you can hook it up with standard SATA data and power cables in modern desktops.

Good luck!