rmasters

Hi there,

I've acquired an old laptop I'm trying to put to some use. Afaict (it's poorly marked) it's a Mitac 5033, although I've never heard of that make myself.

Anyway, as to the problem. When I start it up all I get is a blank screen. Start-up generally goes like this:

1. Initial spinning of hard drive and fan flares up.
2. HDD read light flashes once.
3. HDD stops spinning and light goes out.
4. After 10 minutes or so the fans flare up again (presumably the CPU's getting hot by that time).

I'm not getting any POST and can't access the BIOS.

I've tried resetting the CMOS battery and using a seperate display. I've also tried using just the power cable with the battery taken out but only get the same. After charging it for ~2 hours and attempting to run it off the battery it didn't even start-up so I assume the battery's bricked.

I'm told this has been used before (probably about a year ago) and worked fine then. It may be it just needs an overnight charge but I'm reluctant to do that as after the 2 hour charge the laptop was quite hot.

I appreciate any help you can give me - it's a shame to just have to dump it.

Thanks,
Ross

Edit: One thing I've considered but haven't tried is using a boot disk. It does have a CD drive and a floppy drive, although I don't expect it's set to boot from CD. Is there anything I can put on a floppy drive to help this along? Not sure which OS is on the machine but I can try and find out.

TriggerFinger

I understand that when you power ON you do not see anything (not even a blinking cursor) on the screen.. is this correct? As per your post this is also the same when you used an external monitor. Try to reset the CMOS, you need to remove the CMOS battery (not the backup battery that is used when not plugged to AC). If this is what you did already, I suggest you open it up, clean the inside and reapply thermal compound.

Post back what you find out...

rmasters

Thanks for the response TriggerFinger.

Yes, that's what's happening.

I did this a second time for good measure but no improvement unfortunately.

I guess opening this thing up was inevitable really :) I understand that laptops are built differently to towers - I'm fairly familiar with the modifying desktop machines - is there anything extra I should read first before messing around with the laptop?

Thanks for your help,
Ross

TriggerFinger

Get hold of a service manual for your model. May be it may take you a while to get one... try Google or manufacturers website.

At the moment, I suggest you reseat the HDD, the CD/DVD drive and the RAM. Also remove the battery and unplug AC then press and hold power ON button for 30secs. Put back battery and plug back AC then power ON as normal.