I am in a panic! My laptop will not turn on. The lights that light up when you plug it in are not on and it appears to be without any power at all. Have I lost all my pictures, research,etc.?!! I will take it in tonight but I cannot wait to know if I have lost EVERYTHING! Does anyone know if I have a chance at saving what is on the hard drive?

Cathy wrote:

I am in a panic! My laptop will not turn on. The lights that light up when you plug it in are not on and it appears to be without any power at all. Have I lost all my pictures, research,etc.?!! I will take it in tonight but I cannot wait to know if I have lost EVERYTHING! Does anyone know if I have a chance at saving what is on the hard drive?

Cathy DON'T PANIC, the content of your hard drive can be easily recovered, in any case I hope that also your laptop can be fixed.

You finally blew that thing up, did you? Livio is right. The hard drive should be intact. Take it in a let someone look at it to make sure the laptop can also be saved. No use in panicking until you know for sure whats wrong with it.

Have you tried holding down the power (on/off) button for 30 secs? That sometimes will jump start a PC that was turned off.

You could look
>HERE< too! You may just find an answer...
It seems that taking out the battery and then putting in back in often works too!

Thanks Livio, Nuccia and Carole. Yes, I did try everything - I pulled the battery out several times and re-inserted it. I also tired leaving it out. I used several different power sources (sockets) too. As long as the data is recoverable, that is all I care about, although it would be nice to save the laptop since I have had it barely one year (almost to the day). I'll go to Best Buy's (where I bought it) Geek Squad tonight. Hopefully this won't cost too much. I don't think Santa does repairs.

Cathy,

I'm sure you'll be able to recover everything. Just in case, I said a prayer to Saint Isidore, patron saint of computers.
www.scborromeo.org/sai...idores.htm

Biff

WHOO HOO!!!! I went home at lunch, unplugged it, removed the battery again (this time I blew in the battery area in case there was dust) and it works! I immediately copied everything new in the past couple of months on my portable hard drive. Lesson learned.
Thanks everybody! St. Isadore?! How did he get to be Patron Saint of computers?

Thats wonderful Cathy! I wish someone told me about St. Isadore when mine went done a few months ago.

Skype me tonight (or now if you can)...Need to tell you something!

Generally speaking a can of compressed air can solve a LOT of problems, not only with a laptop but a desktop as well. Liberally blowing out all the vents, cd/dvd players, USB ports, ect will help keep things running cool and with better connectivity. I live in a very dry environment and typically open the cases of my PCs about every 2 or 3 months and blow out the dust, paying special attention to the CPU cooling unit. Just be careful not to blow air directly into a fan and set it spinning at a high rate of speed as this can destroy the fan. Under any circumstance the cleaner you keep ANY PC the better it will run. Also don't forget that if you do open up your computer remember to touch the metal case before you touch any internal components to discharge any static electricity you may be carrying on your person. It does not take much of a spark at all to fry the delicate electronics in there.

Thanks. I have seen them use compressed air at work for the keyboards but I never thought to use it anywhere else. Definitely something to invest in.

WOW - thanks 'DHawk320' - is this really your name?

You know I just never, ever, thought of doing that to any of the computers I've had... I'm now wondering if that was the trouble with my last one, which I switched off very quickly when it began smoking. I presumed it was ruined and went out and bought a new one. But I'm now wondering if a bit of housework on it might not solve the problem. I could really make use of it if I can re-instate to a working condition as it has a floppy disc drive and I have soooooo many files on floppies that I cant download on my new HP Vista PC.

BTW - forgive me DH... but a warm to "Gente" - but why don't you go over to our 'About Us' forum and tell us a little about yourself and who/why you are researching.

Look forward to seeing you there.

Carole