Compaq laptop seems to be dead

[bucwylde23]

Ok

My mom's laptop seemed to stop working.

When she brought it over here, I powered it up and it showed the compaq logo, then I had to choose whether to start windows normally, go into safe mode, or use the last good configuration.
I tried ALL of these choices, and each time it would show the "loading windows" screen, then on the very next screen, it would give me a blue screen error that flashed very quickly. At that point the laptop would just power off and try to reboot. It would stay in that cycle until I forced the power off.

I took a paper clip and held the reset button in on the bottom of the laptop, and now it doesn't do ANYTHING. When I push the power button, everything lights up and I can hear the fans spinning. It also spins a cd if I put one in the cd drive. But the screen stays black and I can't even get into the bios now.

I have also tried reseating the memory modules and removing one at a time to see if one was bad. Still no luck.

Does anyone have any other ideas? I'm thinking the motherboard has died, at which point the laptop can be trashed.

 

[SparkyJJO]

At first it sounded like a major windows crash but after it not even getting to POST I have a feeling the mobo may be bad, or maybe the CPU. But, don't trash the laptop, I'll take it

 

[bucwylde23]

Yeah I am pretty sure it's the mobo, I just wanted to verify with you guys I don't fix laptops all that often.
I just can't explain why it seemingly worked fine before I reset the laptop. I thought it was just a windows corruption, and I was going to reinstall windows and be done with it.

I'll probably give it away if that's what they want to do with it

it's not THAT bad of a laptop, just huge and heavy as hell. it'd probably cost a bundle just to ship it

 

[Nocturnal]

This is my theory on this type of thing. The motherboard was on its way out. It was holding on for dear life but once you cleared the CMOS then it basically crapped itself. I've seen it happen to me on a number of occasions.

 

[SparkyJJO]

It may be repairable but seeing that it doesn't even respond anymore I have a feeling something fried. I wasn't aware there is a reset button on the bottom of those things actually, I don't recall seeing any little button on the bottom of my old laptop. But it was a dell and not a compaq, that might be part of it.

 

[ojai00]

I had the same problem with a colleague's laptop. It turned out to be a failed hard drive after I was able to catch a glimpse of the blue screen message.