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What does this blinky line mean?

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  • #1

    What does this blinky line mean?

    I'm savvy, but not savvy enough, obviously.

    I currently have a Sager Laptop in my possession. I came upon this little treasure by sheer stupidity too; the previous owner had dumped tea on the laptop and was unable to use it (it wouldn't boot up, he said). So he said I could have it. After it sat around for a few weeks, it finally came into my possession and into my home (where I fed it after midnight and it wrecked havoc everywhere!).

    I took the battery out, Floppy out and inspected to outer casing for any damages. So far, zilch but I wasn't content in that. Silly me, I installed the harddrive, battery and floppy drive, plugged it all in and turned it on.

    OH MY GOD! It RUNS IN SAFE MODE!



    But in my elation, I was stupid. I shut it down thinking I could run it in normal mode and this is where the trouble began. So far, the only trouble.

    The computer doesn't finish booting. It basically goes to a blank (black) screen with a very thin little blinky line at the top. No words, nothing.

    This lasts for approximately 45 minutes. I just checked it to see if it was still running to discover it has turned itself off. Okay, no problem. Hit the power button. It revs it's little fans and cuts back off.

    It's a nice computer (when it runs) and would like to get it to run again. I figure the motherboard is probably trashed, but since it booted up the one time already, I do not know.

    Ideas?

    And it's okay to tell me it's now a very expensive paper weight.
    Ridiculous 2009 Predictions: Evil Queen will beat Martha Stewart to death with a muffin pan. All hail Evil Queen! (Some things don't need elaboration.....) -- Jester

    Ridiculous 2010 Predictions: Evil Queen, after escaping prison for last years prediction, goes out and waffle irons Rachel Ray to death. -- SG15Z

    Ridiculous 2011 Prediction: Evil Queen will beat Gordon Ramsay over the head with a cast-iron skillet. -- FireHeart
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  • #2
    my first question is how adventurous are you feeling. if you are very careful and have a poloroid camera handy you can disassemble the machine, clean it with pcb cleaner and inspect it for blown caps and fried resistors. once its cleaned and checked it may work fine. if not its a good learning tool for what most laptops look like on the inside. i mention the camera so that you can take photos of what it looks like as youre taking it appart. i did that with my 350 and was able to put it back together just fine.
    This is a drama-free zone; violators will be slapped. -Irving Patrick Freleigh
    my blog:http://steeledragon.wordpress.com/

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    • #3
      I'm very adventurous. But no Polaroid, though I do have a very nice digital camera with a nice sized screen I can use.

      Of course, it would help if I knew what a cap and resistor was.
      Ridiculous 2009 Predictions: Evil Queen will beat Martha Stewart to death with a muffin pan. All hail Evil Queen! (Some things don't need elaboration.....) -- Jester

      Ridiculous 2010 Predictions: Evil Queen, after escaping prison for last years prediction, goes out and waffle irons Rachel Ray to death. -- SG15Z

      Ridiculous 2011 Prediction: Evil Queen will beat Gordon Ramsay over the head with a cast-iron skillet. -- FireHeart

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      • #4
        cap = capacitor

        Resistor

        I AM the evil bastard!
        A+ Certified IT Technician

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        • #5
          lordlundar beat me to it!

          You may not be able to see anything and if you do you might not recognize it, what you can do is boot something like memtest86. You didn't mention if it has a cd drive or not, so here's a version for floppy: http://www.memtest.org/#downiso

          Run that for several hours and see what happens. If there is something wrong with the mobo, cpu, or ram, it'll generally manifest as an error in memtest.

          If it does have a cd drive you can boot damnsmalllinux and play around for a while and see if it crashes. If it can boot off usb, you can use another computer to boot the dsl cd, run the install to usb script, then use the usb drive to boot the lappie.
          Supporting the idiots charged with protecting your personal information.

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          • #6
            The times I've seen a blinking line like that on the bootup, it's meant that the master boot record was trashed, or that the next files to load couldn't be found (such as ntldr.sys).

            So, is there a CD-rom? Boot from a live linux cd, and try it out. Try reformatting the hard drive, see what happens.

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