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Note: I'm aware there is a computer help topic. I thought a dedicated topic might be better, but if this topics needs to be locked, I understand.




I have a presario f700 Compaq laptop, and just a couple of days ago I ran into the worst case scenario. It will not even turn on. I click the power button and all it does is the lights flash on for about a second. No hardware turns on at all. Its not the battery. I used my power cord and tried with just the battery, but still nothing. I have even took areas I can access apart to clean out and to see if anything might be loose, but It seemed okay.

What might be the problem? I want to avoid taking into best buy for the one millionth time to see what's wrong. Most likely knowing the fact that this laptop has a faulty hardware history, I'm afraid to see how much it will cost this time...Most likely my Dad wouldn't even pay for it. He's mad about this anyway.

Would it be possible to rescue my files or even remove the hard drive an put into another laptop? Or are my files gone forever? I'm desperate over here.


Please don't ask me the "If your computer is broken, how did you type this?" question. I have a desktop in my room. There ya go.

Since the computer won't even boot to the BIOS this is most likely a motherboard problem. If there is a hard drive problem, then it would be something in addition to the motherboard problem since the hard drive isn't accessed until after BIOS boots up.
So assuming that it is a motherboard problem, you should be able to take out the hard drive and get your files back fairly easily. From a quick google search, I would guess that the hard drive is a SATA hard drive as opposed to an IDE hard drive, but you'll want to check to make sure. Easiest way to check would be to take out the hard drive and check the connector. Here's a picture that should illustrate the difference. Once you figure out what type of hard drive you have, if you just want to transfer your files to another computer, then you can get a SATA (or IDE) to USB adapter which would let you interface your hard drive with another computer and get your files back. Then you could use your old hard drive plus the adapter as an external hard drive if you wanted to. As for price, I got an IDE/SATA to USB adapter for around $30 back in June. You could probably find something similar. If you wanted to use the hard drive in another laptop, then it probably would work assuming the architecture isn't too terribly different. I haven't tried something like this, so I'm not sure how well it would work. You would need to make sure the hard drive is compatible and if it does load the OS, you would probably need to install new drivers. This option would probably only work well if you have another laptop around already. I don't think a laptop without a hard drive would be much less expensive than the same model with a new hard drive included, but you can look around. As for fixing the laptop, assuming it is a motherboard problem, motherboards in laptops are a pain to mess with. If you're planning on doing it yourself then you should assume that it would take the better part of a day to get everything apart. If you were to have someone professionally do it, then you would probably expect it to be fairly expensive because the labor would take a long time, plus there would be the cost of the part either way. I think a Presario F700 is a fairly old laptop, so you'd have to decide whether it would be worth it to try to fix.
I hope that helps some. Feel free to ask if you have any other questions

How much would a motherboard cost? Also my laptop made these weird "beep" sounds here and there.
The same goes for the connector. How much does that cost?

The weird beep noises could be your computer battery getting low,and needing to be replaced.

Uh no, I used my laptop with the power cord.

The beeping could be a beep code telling you what's wrong. It isn't always the case, but could be a bit of help. Try to write down how many beeps there are, and their length. When my hard drive failed, my computer gave me a beep code. This, obviously, is different, and since it might be the motherboard, who knows. It is definitely worth a try.

Well, somtimes it was just one beep that lasted a second, and sometimes it was 3 beeps that lasted about a second.

okay, here is what I found by searching the beep codes online

1 beep: Faulty memory refresh circuit
*A failure in the device creating the beep codes themselves (also part of the motherboard)

3 beeps: Unable to start flashing (such as when missing a utility or BIOS image)
*BIOS on the motherboard could be corrupted or has failed. AKA: Motherboard failure

By what I can tell, your motherboard has crashed. That has a tendency to cost a lot to replace, since that is what actually makes up the computer. Without it, you just have a bunch of accessories not connected to anything.

Best bet is to do what Velexxus said and buy an adapter to connect the hard drive to your desktop. If you decide to replace your laptop, but don't have a lot of money to do so, try Ebay. There are a lot of excellent laptops being sold for decent prices. I would recommend looking for a Compaq Evo N610c. It's what I use, and I could honestly say that it is one of the best computers I have ever used. Hope this is some help to you .

Possible Cause:

3 Beeps is indeed Base 64K RAM failure, which too is indeed integrated into your motherboard. Basically your laptop took a suicidal approach by frying the power supply and it's internal battery & connector (which powers the motherboard's Base 64K RAM anyways) by means of an electric short *typically*. In this scenario, a new motherboard is required and since Compaq is required to have the SAME model motherboard for each individual laptop, it usually is an arm and a leg to find replacement parts (like all Apple computers). Since the power supply and internal battery pin is fried, your computer will spout sporadic beep errors or even boot hardware for a second before crashing.

And yes, as mentioned above, you can fully recover all your files assuming you have an ATA or IDE connected harddrive, which is usually always. The only thing that would stop you is if you ever encrypted your files in User Accounts in Windows, which means the only way to access your files again would be to have that harddrive run on the same BIOS, motherboard, and OS settings as it previously was, which in your case would be a big 'oh noez'.

Ok so all the compaqs I've used were pretty sukkish.

Still, I have some pointers:
Does your computer make a really loud beep wham it starts?
Does the hard drive make an rrrrrrrrrrr sound or an errr-ch-ch-err sound

When did you get this computer? My friend has one that's he probably got when xp came out. Now it needs to reboot it's self 3 times to get running.

No, and no. It didn't do anything. I got the laptop last year in the spring, and it was running Vista.

No. the last time I used it I shut it down, and when I went to use it again a couple days later, all it did when I pressed the power button was the lights on it would flash on and off.

I'll just take a video of what it does...