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Mr. Luddite

On 1/21/2014 10:18 AM, Hank wrote:
On 1/21/2014 9:48 AM, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 1/21/2014 8:36 AM, F.O.A.D. wrote:
On 1/21/14, 12:59 AM, wrote:
On Mon, 20 Jan 2014 22:10:56 -0500, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

I still have an older XP laptop but something recently died
in it. It won't boot up anymore.

Any idea of what is going on? Does it get through POST? Do you see
signs of life from the boot drive?

I hate seeing these things getting thrown in the land fill for a minor
problem.

If it is an old laptop, and it isn't a software or software update
problem, then you have to weigh the time and expense involved in a
repair versus buying a new laptops. Run of the mill laptops are pretty
cheap these days, and almost any of them would be many steps up from an
old XP-era laptop.

There also are plenty of used, operating laptops available at pawnshops.
I saw a whole showcase full of them when I was salivating over the
McIntosh amp I finally bought.

It's an old Compaq that I bought not too long before HP bought them. It
performed fine for years until recently. Now it just starts to boot,
disk drive whirrs and then it just shuts off and tries again, over and
over. Never see anything on the screen although the backlight lights up.

I took the hard drive out. I have one of those USB adapters that allows
you to connect it to another computer. Disk drive works as I can see
and copy the files on it. Suspect something on the motherboard and it's
not worth fixing.

I still have a small Averatec labtop running XP that I used on the boat
and in the RVs we had. It still works fine.

The last two laptops I got have been HPs. Both are supposedly optimized
for multi-media. I don't know what that means or if it makes any
difference in performance but I've never had any issues with either. One
Vista and one Win 7, both 64 bit machines.

I suspect you have a bad bootstrap. Do you still have that bootstrap
loader paper tape reader that came with the unit?

Sure I do. I collect them.