Helen Oliver

I have an NEC laptop about five years old and have installed Windows XP SP1 on it. The battery is no good and have been running it on power for about 12 months. Now it won't even turn on when plugged into the power and if I do get power to it I am also having trouble booting up Windows.
I read in the book that it has a CMOS battery that could need replacing. Could that be creating all the problems?

TriggerFinger

hi,

can you at least boot and enter into BIOS settings?

Helen Oliver

Hi,

no it won't boot at all. There is power going to the computer because the CD rom activates and can be opened, but the green power light is not coming on and absolutely nothing is happening now.

tannerjohn

If the CD rom activates and can be opened you are getting past the BIOS startup, in my opinion. Do you get any strange beeping when you turn it on? Could you have accidentally hit the FN key combination that swithes the monitor modes, and switched it to external....turning off your monitor? Is the fan running while just sitting there and appearing to not be running.

Just some questiong more so than answers for you. Just very strange that you can open the CD rom door, but you get nothing on screen. A dead CMOS battery will not prevent it from booting up, that I know of, it just looses all it's non-default config like time/date.

Helen Oliver

Hi tannerjohn,

I think it's strange too that the CD rom opens, but everything else seems dead. I can't hear a fan running and I read somewhere here that if the fan is stuffed the computer won't come on as it has some internal protection that won't allow it if the fan doesn't work. We've tried to get the computer open to access the CMOS battery but there's just something stopping it coming apart. I have had strange beeping before it went competely dead, but now there's nothing. Don't even know where or what the combination FN key is. but I don't think it's that. Any more suggestions, eg could the hard drive or the motherboard be dead?

TriggerFinger

hi,

given that this seems to be a problem caused by so many things, i suggest you start testing some components... the usual suspects if you will

first start with an external monitor. use an external monitor and see if you get something on screen when you power ON the laptop. so attach the vga external monitor, turn it ON and power ON the laptop. if you still get a blank screen on the external monitor, try replacing your RAM... yes, all of the installed RAM, replace it with just one working module.