A fiend asked me to take a look at his laptop and see if I could bring it back to life. It shows signs of being dropped hard, but he was on vacation and couldn't confirm it. Shortly before he left, he asked me to give it a tune up, so I know it was in working order about 6 weeks ago.
It's a Compaq Presario F732NR.
1.8GHz Athlon X2, 1GB DDR2, began life with Vista, 160GB HDD (now dead).
First off, the HDD is totally dead. It does the 'buzz..... click! buzz..... click!' of death and won't show up in bios or any OS on my main rig. I'm currently attempting to install win 7 on one of my drives to see if it works. Even if it does, I think this laptop might be fragged anyway.
When powered on, it lights up, fans an optical drive behave normally, but there's no display. This is the same if plugged into an external display. If left alone, it will kick off and try to restart. Eventually, it will post. Attempting manually takes anywhere from 3 to 10 attempts to get a post.
It took about 10 tries to get it to boot ubuntu from CD. Once it did, it worked just fine. In fact, it's worked 4 out of 5 since. The Win 7 DVD started up just fine as well (after I got it to post). The installer crashed while I was posting this, but I've seen it do that a lot on laptops that did eventually cooperate.
Once it's loaded an os, it's fine. Also passed memtest86 for about an hour.
QUESTION:
Lets assume that I can get it to take an install. If it takes half a dozen attempts to post, this could mean the board is dying. Is it worth even buying him a new drive? I don't have any spares I can give up, and I don't want him to drop $40-$50 on a laptop that's half-dead and on its way down.
Thanks.
It's a Compaq Presario F732NR.
1.8GHz Athlon X2, 1GB DDR2, began life with Vista, 160GB HDD (now dead).
First off, the HDD is totally dead. It does the 'buzz..... click! buzz..... click!' of death and won't show up in bios or any OS on my main rig. I'm currently attempting to install win 7 on one of my drives to see if it works. Even if it does, I think this laptop might be fragged anyway.
When powered on, it lights up, fans an optical drive behave normally, but there's no display. This is the same if plugged into an external display. If left alone, it will kick off and try to restart. Eventually, it will post. Attempting manually takes anywhere from 3 to 10 attempts to get a post.
It took about 10 tries to get it to boot ubuntu from CD. Once it did, it worked just fine. In fact, it's worked 4 out of 5 since. The Win 7 DVD started up just fine as well (after I got it to post). The installer crashed while I was posting this, but I've seen it do that a lot on laptops that did eventually cooperate.
Once it's loaded an os, it's fine. Also passed memtest86 for about an hour.
QUESTION:
Lets assume that I can get it to take an install. If it takes half a dozen attempts to post, this could mean the board is dying. Is it worth even buying him a new drive? I don't have any spares I can give up, and I don't want him to drop $40-$50 on a laptop that's half-dead and on its way down.
Thanks.