ATI Mobility Radeon 9200

[joebuk]

I have a Sony VAIO K315Z laptop with ATI mobility Radeon 9200 graphics.
I installed XP prof on one drive - all ok.
Then I installed Win 7 Enterprise on another drive - still apparently all OK. The computer hardware teacher at a technical college I went to for a 2 month outreach course said 'software cannot damage hardware' - I'm skeptical of this claim.
I stored the laptop for a couple of months with the battery removed but placed on the laptop cover - over the screen.
When I restarted the laptop with the XP drive in it, the display showed only thin, coloured vertical lines. I connected the laptop to an external Dell LCD monitor with only an 'out of range' message showing.
Taking the Hard drive out I still get the same outcome - I can't even get the Setup screen.
Has anyone any idea of what the hell has happened.
Thanks, Joe

 

[alyoshka]

It's a Sony.
No, that's got nothing to do with it, I just remembered the advt. and it popped out.
What you can do or should have done first before you got the laptop back out off the shelf and pumped life into it , you should have put in the Battery and let it get fully charged, checked the vents to see if they were clogged by anything and given it the compressed air treatment. After that you first get into the BIOS to see if everything is ok, and then you get the rig on in safe mode to see if it's forgotten where it's parts were connected and were made by who.

Nowadays you can't just leave equipment not working for long periods of time and then expect them to just come on one fine day and work normally, in this world of hitech, equipment has got more human and more lazy with it. If on holiday, it just never wants to come back to work.
Software can damage hardware only if you tell it to.
Computers are machines, once a wise man described them as Garbage in = garbage out.
Just what they are, machines.

 

[Mousemonkey]

Best answer selected by mousemonkey.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey