COMPUTER HELP! Sorry it's not diet related...

amelia_atlantic

Hey y'all,

I know this is not fitness related but I need some technical advice. I figured since we MFPers offer advice everywhere else, this was fair game!

I have an HP Pavillion laptop that's about 3 years old (I think!) Yesterday, I watched a movie on it and went to the gym. When I came back an hour and half later, it was off. I tried to turn it on and all the lights and fan came on but not the screen. It then turned itself off and then on again repeating the cycle until I had to shut it off.

The power button is not stuck. I've unplugged everything and plugged it back in. That's basically all I know how to do when it comes to computers. Technology eludes me!

Any advice? Is my computer toast?

Thanks for reading!

xarrium

Something similar happened to me once, although it wasn't repeatedly turning on/off. I unplugged the computer and took out the battery, then plugged it in again and turned it on and it worked fine. Not sure if you've removed the battery yet, but if you haven't, give it a try and hopefully it works. Good luck--I hate computer malfunctions!

emmaldownie

Sounds like the Processor or the Graphics Card, take it too a shop, but it sounds like the Processor- at the age you never know Laptop are generally out of date a year after you buy them :grumble: :mad:

Take it to a Techie, but in my opinion, its toast, treat yourself (if possible) to a new one

Umpire57

Before taking it in, do as the other user stated and unplug and remove battery first. Wait a minute and then put battery back in and try.

If that does not work then try it again and see if it will power on with power and without the battery plugged in at all.

SHBoss1673

Yep, doesn't sound promising. I would definitely try the battery removal first as well, plus if you are daring, you can try removing the RAM (in the back) and see if it boots up to an error message. If it does, you fried your ram and can just buy new ram, if you're not that daring, this would be one of the first things most tech's would do (did it for 6 years so I'm pretty confident that's what they would try first), When you get power and fan but no life, it's generally something directly plugged into the motherboard, either the board itself, the ram or the cpu, it's not a hard drive problem, as that wouldn't show up until later in the process, and it's not a operating system issue as that also would show up later.

Sounds like the video made the laptop run hot, and hot laptops (especially older ones) tend to fry cpu's and other onboard components, which usually mean it's time to get a new one (unless it's just RAM) because the cost of repair is about the same as a new machine. The good news is your hard drive is probably fine, and you can pick up a cheap, external drive bay (you can get them for like $25 at most computer stores) and pull all your data down off of it, or even use it as a backup.

July24Lioness

Yep, sounds like one of the following:

RAM
CPU
Power Supply
Graphics Card

In my 12 years of experience, I have seen those same symptoms be one of the above mentioned issues.

You have already been given good things to try, I won't double post.