Member Avatar for ody

Hi, im trying my luck here as my notebook no longer boots. Well its a bit old (5 years) and actually died about 2 years ago. I set it aside and lately was trying to revive it. here are the symtoms;

- Plug it in; i get the DC light in the front of the case
- Press the power button; ON LED in front of case turns on, but nothing else. I can hear the HD wine up, does a little clicking, like its searching for something. Then stops. does a little more then stops. And thats all i get. No screen activity, no BIOS screen, tried hit F12, ESC, F3, nothing.
- Also did swap out the HD into another laptop, and it boots good, so im sure its not the HD.
- Removed Batter; same symptoms
- One last thing i noticed when i had the keyboard off, i can see the CPU Fan, and it never turns ON. Wondering if the fan is defective.

Question: Does anyone know if defective Fan will NOT let the computer boot? It does have 3 wire indicating to me that there is some feedback to MB to monitor the fan, but i thought it should not matter on boot up (i know it will shut itself down, but only after reaching some temp. limits), but maybe im wrong. I rotated the fan manually and it seems smooth. I am probable going to try and salvage another fan and do quick test to see if a working fan can allow it to boot.

Any other input or ideas to try?

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by JemB
Member Avatar for JemB

some laptops the fan has to reach a certain speed or tunr on to boot, but this sounds more like a hdd issue, will it boot off a floppy or a cd?

Member Avatar for ody

Does not boot from floppy or CD, I inserted bootable Win XP CD and held F12 down, then press ON power button. I hear different results from the HD but no joy.

I believe HD is ok, as i swapped it into a known good laptop and it boots just fine. All my old files are there etc, so i dont think its HD failure.

I left it ON for about an hour, just to see if the FAN will turn on, but it never does, so am focusing now on the fan. I was looking for a spare fan from my goodie parts bin, but seems like im going have to go spend a couple of dollars to buy one just to see if it will work.

thanks for repling...

Member Avatar for JemB

check out the ground wire on the fan. these sometimes go. it can be sorted by removing the ground wire from the block and grounding it onto the metal casing beneath the keyboard with a bit of solder instead. it's a trick ive used more than once.

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