Freezing on Boot Screen

[jamie2108]

i got an old dell latitude C680 which has stopped working. when you turn it on it freezes completly on the first screen, the dell boot screen. you cant get into setup, BIOS and you cant autorun any disks.

is the laptop completly dead or can it be fixed? is there anything i can do that doesnt involve taking it apart?

 

[Tmagic650]

Remove the hard drive and see if the laptop detects that it is missing. You will have to take a screw out of the bottom or you might have to remove the keyboard to get to the hard drive...

A hard drive replacement is the first thing to do for this problem

 

[steelfatboy]

I think you may need to take it apart somewhat. First, unplug the laptop and pop out the battery. Next find the hard drive and remove it. I believe it should in a caddy and may only require 1 screw to be removed. Look on the side of the laptop for it. Remove the cdrom as well. After that, plug the laptop back in and see if it will allow you to get into the bios. If it does, it's a problem with one of the devices. Try adding them back one at a time to determine which one it is.

 

[jamie2108]

ok i tried both methods. i have attached a pic of first screen to this post. this is the screen it gets stuck on. it still got stuck when both were taken out.. the with only one of the 2 taken out. i then put them both back in and tried again. this time i left the laptop on, rather than turning it straight back off and after about a minute another screen appears. this screen says:

Primary hard disk drive 0 not found

No bootable devices -- strike F1 to retry boot, F2 for setup utility.


by pressing F1 it just goes back to the first screen and freezes till this second screen appears again. if i press F2 i get into the BIOS. just as the message says, it shows 'Primary Hard Drive: None'

i then inserted a Windows XP disk and re-booted. it booted from the disk only to find no hard drive so im guessing the problem is actually the hard drive and that it needs a new one.

but now also it isnt charging so im guessing that the battery is broken.

its gonna cost too much to try and fix it so im just gonna leave it.

 

[Tmagic650]

The hard drive is bad... The battery may just be worn out. How old is the laptop? 4+ years?

You might take it to a repair shop or save your money and buy a new one

 

[jamie2108]

its on old company laptop that i was given. probs at least 5years old. easier to just get rid of it and buy something new.

 

[Tmagic650]

Ok that's a good idea. Battery about $100, hard drive $60...