Urgent: Laptop seems to have died

[kaldor]

I just installed Quake 4. After loading up the game, the graphics went all messy and froze. After turning off the laptop, I try turning it back on.

When I do this, the screen flickers and then goes black. Lots of whistling. I cannot do a thing. I have some important things on this that I cannot afford to lose, and I need help. The closest computer repair store is over an hour's drive away and I have no means of getting a ride there.

The model is an HP Pavilion dv2700.

[kanikilu]

Does this laptop dual-boot, or just Ubuntu? Do you see anything on the screen when you turn it on? If so, does it start to boot and then freeze, or...?

If the system POSTs fine, but just doesn't boot, you might still be able to get into it. Do you have a Live CD you can try to boot from? If so, you could backup important data to an external/flash drive if you have one.

When you turn it on, if you don't see anything on the screen at all, the only other thing I would suggest is to unplug the power adapter from the laptop, remove the battery, and then press and hold the power button for about 5 seconds. Then put it back together and try again...

[kaldor]

Just Ubuntu.

And the only thing that appears on the screen is a small flicker, then it goes black. The flicker is just glitchy looking pixels.

[CraigBray]

Alright, well, those ideas before mine, are very good, here is another thing you can try.
Find a distribution of PUD Linux or something, stick it on a flash drive, boot from it by setting the BIOS to read USB ports then browse the file system and take what data you need/want. Make sure this flash drive is big enough for it, i don't know if you can access other external drives from this. I have Ubuntu 8.04 on my 250gb Western Digital passport drive, and PUD on my 4gb Kingston (which i have repair tools on, might want to look into it, i find it handy) If you CAN get the data and stuff, then it might be a driver problem, and you'd need to re-install the OS to get basic display drivers going. This is a minor speculation on my part, and a long shot chance that this is correct, but it's the first thing I like to try doing, since re-installing Linux is not as bi a hassle as re-installing windows.

[kaldor]

The problem is that the laptop will not turn on. It is not Ubuntu. I do not even get the BIOS, nothing at all.

[kanikilu]

The problem is that the laptop will not turn on. It is not Ubuntu. I do not even get the BIOS, nothing at all.

That sounds like a hardware problem to me...

Out of curiosity, do you have an external monitor you can try to output to?

Try clearing out any static by pulling the battery and whatnot (explained earlier) if you haven't already. Depending on your laptop, you may also be able to easily access the RAM in a compartment on the bottom of your laptop, if that's the case, it probably wouldn't hurt to re-seat the modules. Some laptops also have an easily accessible hard-drive, it probably couldn't hurt to re-seat that as well. Also, if the hard-drive is accessible, you could always try an external USB enclosure to try to access the data from another computer, if you have one or have access to one.

I'm no expert when it comes to hardware (especially laptops), but there's probably not a whole lot more you can do...

[kaldor]

Can't get access to another monitor.

[kanikilu]

Okay. Have you tried any of those other things?

I'm not really sure what you're looking for here...maybe try the hardware forum, but at the end of the day if you can't (or are not willing to) do some basic diagnostics/troubleshooting, there isn't much anyone is going to be able to do via an internet forum

[CraigBray]

Are there any Beeps? That would signal that the POST is having trouble with some component check. If there is, Google (or call if under warranty) and describe the beeps. The bios is model specific, so each beep could mean something different for each model. My bios in my Acer 6920g won't beep the same as most (if not all) other Acer laptops.