Gutted. My laptop is dead.
And not just a “Windows has encountered a problem” type dead. I mean, stone cold, completely and utterly dead.
Imagine the scene. I was relieving the boredom of spending a nightshift at Employment place by reading about the complete insignificance of the iphone launch, which appears to have caught the whole country in a state of indifference. All of a sudden, *phut*. A low pitch thud eminated from the laptop, and all life ceased. The power lights were out, the battery indicator / charger lights were out, the whole thing had gone.
I remembered, 24 hours earlier, it seemed hotter than usual. I put this down to possibly the battery being at fault, as it’s starting to get a bit old now, so I removed the battery. Hurrah. Life again, for a brief few seconds. The lights lit, the POST completed, and Windows began to load. And, then it went dead again. Grrr. Possibly an overheating issue, or so I thought.
I moved the machine near the window, and kept it off for a bit, in the hope that the cool early-morning air will bring it back to life.
No such luck Although it still came on, all I would get are the power lights. And since then, I have not been able to get it working.
The current symptoms are as follows
If the power button is pressed, it powers up. Screen does not light. CPU fan kicks in for about a second. HDD light and CDROM light both switch on for about 10th second. The CDROM drive completes its own selftest (it scans for a disk, and light flashes on unit), and hard drive can be heard to spin up. Still nothing on the screen. No POST beeps either.
The whole system then locks up, with no further progress. The power button needs to be held in for 5 seconds in order to power it off.
I have tried removing the HDD, though this was as I expected, a completely pointless and useless excersise. Ah well.
OK, so I’ve described the symptoms, I’m at a loss at what could be done about it, or what could have caused it. More importantly, I have no idea whether it can be fixed, or whether I have a rather expensive brick.
Unfortunately, it’s at times like this I get a bit sentimental. Christ, I seem to remember writing an essay just because the fluorescent tube in the kitchen burned out, imagine how I feel about my laptop (aptly named “Carrie” by MS, just before “her) passing) entering into the second life. I could edit lots of photographs, and create a slideshow of our short but happy time together. Instead, I’ll upload a Youtube video of exactly what is happening.
And I’ll put it HERE once Youtube BLOODY WORKS. Grrrrrrrrrr.
Sooo, the future then. I might as well put this one down to experience, and scrap it. As far as I’m concerned, it’s had it. If I were to open it up and begin tinkering around inside it, it might as well just be put in the bin. Of course, I don’t quite know WHICH bin it goes into, thank-you-very-much Hartlepool Borough Council, and your insane recycling scheme.
I fancy a new one anyway. The other one is getting a little dated anyway, and with only 512Mb RAM, it’s not exactly the sharpest tool in the drawer. Wow, I can’t believe I’m saying that 512Mb isn’t a lot of memory. Two years ago, that was top spec. Johnny 5, the robot from Short Circuit 1 + 2, claimed to only have 500Mb RAM, but I digress.
I’ve not done a proper impulse buy since March/April, when I bought the streetlight from ebay. Maybe I should do it with a new laptop?
