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[Hzza]

Anyone got any tips on laptop troubleshooting? My lappy's stopped waking up when you open the lid and refusing to restart even after a hard restart (holding the power button down). The only way I've been able to boot again is by taking the battery and power cable out over night; started fine this morning, closed the lid, waited for it to go into sleep mode, opened the lid, fucker wouldn't wake up.

I've spent the morning on the Dell forums and saw fixes ranging from installing SP1 (I'm currently on SP2) and rolling back the BIOS to buying a new £100 battery and changing the power saving options, which all sound retarded IMO.

Basically, I'm confused .

I'm thinking it'll just be easier to do a full Windows reinstall, but ofc, I don't have a boot disk, I have a "recovery partition" and have no idea how to reinstall Vista from that either...

Anyone have any ideas or tips on where to go next?

[Guilt]

You should have a dell restore program somewhere in the start menu.

Edit: support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/kcs/document?c=us&l=en&s=gen&docid=DSN_336966&isLegacy=true

[Hzza]

Why can I never find shit like that?! My google-fu must be getting weak.

Cheers dude <3.

[Naftman]

My google-fu

Applause ! Made me grin :-)

[Guilt]

On a laptop hardware related subject, does anyone know of any laptop manufacturers that have decent power connectors. My laptop is suffering from wobble power cable disease, this is the 3rd laptop I've had that's dieing/died from it.
 The only good ones I know of is the magnetic one on macbooks, but I'm not paying that kind of money.

[Hzza]

Never had a problem with the Dell tbh.

Powercable wise, that is .

[Tommy the Cat]

Get a new one, don't try and overclock it.

[Hzza]

edit - As of last night (before I fiddled) the shit wouldn't turn on at all; the power button and media keys would light up, the fan spun for about 2 seconds and then it just turned off again. Trying to power on after this happened resulted in the power button lighting up and nothing else happening. Fairly certain this is now a hardware problem, as it booted fine yesterday morning and worked perfectly in windows, it just didn't wake up from sleep. Either way, once I get it to post, I'll be reinstalling windows straight away.

Ok, did some fiddling last night and took the HDD and RAM out to reseat with no change, still won't post. Found a site last night that said the problem I have is fairly common with the XPS laptop range and can be because some of the screws securing the CPU have come loose and need retightening so my job for tonight is reseating the CPU and cleaning the copper heatsink as its covered in black shite.

Before I do that though, I'm going to try the slightly less fidling but equally likely to work step of getting a new power cable as this is aparently another solution to the "power button lights up but shit doesn't start" problem.

Fuck laptops man, in the future I think I'm just going to get the cheapest fit for purpose thing and bin it every time something goes wrong.

[DeadlyAvenger]

Laptops are one of the few things I would definitely consider an 'extended warranty' on. Usually I wouldn't - but laptops are complicated beasts and fairly prone to hardware failure, being dropped, having stuff spilt on them etc. and it only has to go wrong once and you're scuppered - especially since the cost of replacing the parts usually makes them uneconmical to repair.

[Hzza]

I checked last night and I'm literally 4 days out of the 2 year warranty . At the time I bought it, upping it to a 5 year warranty was about £80 so I'm a bit gutted about that tbh. Will definatly consider it next time!

Another thing I've just thought of; if I connect the laptop hard drive to my PC, would I be able to boot from that drive to rule out a software failure that way?

[DeadlyAvenger]

I checked last night and I'm literally 4 days out of the 2 year warranty . At the time I bought it, upping it to a 5 year warranty was about £80 so I'm a bit gutted about that tbh. Will definatly consider it next time!

Another thing I've just thought of; if I connect the laptop hard drive to my PC, would I be able to boot from that drive to rule out a software failure that way?

Yes. If it's SATA it should just plug in exactly the same as a normal HDD - you will probably have driver issues to contend with though as it boots up.

[Hzza]

Cool cool, cheers duder. If nothing else, it'll give me an oportunity to get the Mrs photos off that drive and onto my backup disk.

[Millicent Bystander]

If you want to install XP Pro I can get tons (well about 10) of genuine codes off work PCs that are being scrapped

[Hzza]

I might take you up on that if I bugger something up with the Windows reinstall .

[Guilt]

*Laptop problems*

Be careful when fixing it you don't "accidentally" spill your tea over it because you might have to claim on the insurance for a new one and that is loads of hassle