HELP! Laptop wont boot up due to overheating??

[gazgogs]

Hi, I drastically need some help before I have to buy a new laptop for my work. I hope you can help!

Recently my ADVENT LAPTOP 7046 has been cutting out every hour due to excessive heating, I reduced this by removing dust etc. Last week, the laptop crashed and is now failing to boot up.

What happens is when switched on it first shows the "Start Windows Normally or Last Configuration Settings" screen. No matter which of these options I choose, after a wait of about 30 seconds it starts to load the Intel Pentium screen (where I can choose F2 SETUP) and then the windows logo starts loading. During the loading of the windows logo it then flashes a blue failure screen (too quickly to read what it says) and then goes back to the "Start Windows Normally" etc menu.

The memory under the laptop was always extremely hot very quickly, do you think I need to replace the memory to enable it to boot up? Or replace the hard drive?

I have tried a full system recovery but this fails with a shutdown message that "your system has been shut down to prevent damage".

I am at a loss what to do and if you need any other information I can give you, your help would be most appreciated. Thanks.

 

[N3051M]

post your minidumps, and one of the guys will read it for you. They are found under %systemroot%\minidump where sysetmroot is your local windows folder. (just copy it into the Run command box..). Take 5-6 of the most recent ones, and attach them here in a .zip file.

If it is overheating and being a laptop, you may need to send it in for repairs, since it may be due to a fault in design or part(s)

 

[IBN]

Just as a point in passing never buy Advent Laptops or Computers.

 

[gazgogs]

Hi, thanks for the comments. Without meaning to sound a bit clueless (although I kinda am), how do I access this minidump log? I cant seem to get into anything apart from BIOS SETUP, how do I access Run Command ? I cant boot up at all. It just loops around trying to boot up and then going back to the "start windows normally" screen. It does try to load the windows (XP comes up for a minute or two) but then crashes really quickly without giving me time to read the blue screen. Im not really sure where to go to access anythnig else.
Thanks again mate.
G

 

[N3051M]

So in other words, you cant access windows or safe mode at all? The run command is in the start menu..

Get a windows xp cd, boot up from it and go to recovery console. type in chkdsk /f and let that run. If you find any errors let it fix it. After all done, try booting again. If it still wont get you to windows, go back to recovery console and this time type in sfc /scannow

Mind you you must use the cd with the winxp version that is current on your laptop - home or pro.. the OEM recovery cd that came with your laptop may not work (but try anyway). If you have nothing to lose on that laptop (files etc) then you can nuke it and do a fresh install and see if that works, but if you have stuff then try the above before we run out of options...

 

[Don1]

Same problem but no CD drive

I have the same problem as outlined by G above (and am probably equally clueless), but my laptop is an ADVENT 7047 (about 3 years old) with a non-functioning internal DVD drive. I have been using an external DVD drive for some time since the internal one (which is a QSI DVD RW SDW-041 that I couldn't find a replcement for) broke and it seems I can't just load XP from the external one. Have also tried copying the rescue CD(DVD) from the supplier to a memory stick and booting from it (computer seems to recognise the USB) but I can't get all of the files onto the 512MB stick and also it seems I can't copy some of the files to the stick within Windows Explorer. Any ideas? Help please!

 

[IBN]

Remove the drive and reseat it back in. That may solve the problem. Sometimes the connections come loose and the drive no longer works.

 

[Don1]

Thanks, I just tried that, would have been nice if it fixed it but it didn't! Any other ideas?

 

[N3051M]

Can you access BIOS? if you can, look for an option to enable "Enable Booting from another Source" or "Enable Booting from USB". That shoud allow the ext. dvd to be able to be used as a boot device..

Otherwise, if you can't get that, then you may need to find some sort of converter and plug in the hdd into another pc, or place it into another laptop of a similar spec/model and run the repair from that. Otherwise, it could be just age thats gotten to it if it still fails

 

[Don1]

Thanks. I can get into BIOS, so I played around with the settings and it seems to now recognise the ext DVD drive and tries to boot from it. Now I get "Operating System Not Found" when it tries to boot. The CD I'm using is an OEM System Recovery disk provided by Advent, I wonder if there is some sort of problem with where it's looking for files, as it will have been desined to operate from the original D: drive? Any more ideas?

 

[IBN]

Have you tried using a CD/DVD cleaning kit for for internal optocal drive? Could be that the internal drive laser just needs cleaning.

Check the boot priority in the BIOS and get the external drive drive to boot first. Make sure your using the correct CD/DVD and make sure its clean.

BTW can the external dvd drive read CDs? If it can only read DVDs then your CD wont boot.

 

[N3051M]

All [most] DVD drives, minus those old ones you'd plug into your tv (non-pc compatible drives), are backwards compatible to CDs etc..

 

[Don1]

The internal CD/DVD drive is kaput but the external DVD drive runs CDs fine and I can get to it through BIOS. I am able to boot with Bart PE but then it can't find the C: drive to run windows. From a DOS prompt I can run chkdisk on it and I get a message that 4 segments are unreadable, it deletes an orphan file and moves onto stage 2, verifying indexes, but crashes soon with the message unspecified error occured. Going back to the original recovery menu that comes up on start up what happens if I select anything except start windows normally, is I get loads of lines saying multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\windows\system32\drivers\... and a long list of driver files.
I am concerned now that this is actually a hard disk (format/ partition?) problem. Help again please?
Is there a way to connect one PC to another to try to save the data that's on the hard drive?