My computer conked out

[LFADAM]

I had my laptop closed but on for a few days this week (Normally it stays on for weeks at a time) and when I finally came back to use it I opened it and the screen was mostly black with blue lines here and there. I just turned it off and thought nothing of it. Well today I turned it on and it whirs to life but nothing comes on the screen. Its just black. Nothing. I tried over and over turning it off then turning it back on and still nothing. Is there anything I can do to fix it or is it dead?

[JoeyJojo]

sounds like a hardware problem. you can try to fix it yourself, but i doubt it is the cable. have you tried hooking it up to an external monitor and see if that works?

what type of laptop? you may can get a used lcd or inverter for it cheap. and installation should be less than an hour.

[LFADAM]

JoeyJojo, Its an IBM R32 I believe... Super old school. 2002ish. I left it on to see if anything would happen. After a while I got a screen with a black background with gray letters/numbers. It was just a few lines of randomness. Like eee ooo with crazy accents over the letters. I pressed enter and it went away. A few mins later a similar screen came up and I did the same thing. It hasnt came back and I can press any button and nothing comes up. But at least I know the screen works. But it still is quite screwed up. Any advice

[JoeyJojo]

hook it up to an external monitor, then try and boot it. see if it is doing the same thing.

[LFADAM]

How do you do that? Do I need to buy a cable or will my monitor cable plug right into my laptop?

[JoeyJojo]

you should have a vga plug on the back of your laptop. if you bought you monitor seperate from the PC it may have a dvi to vga converter that came with it (or find an older monitor to plug in to it)

[JoeyJojo]

if you tried an external monitor and it displays correctly, it may be a bad connection on your display. you may can fix it yourself. it is is garbled on the external display tho, you are screwed methinks.

[LFADAM]

Hm so I still havent tried the monitor thing but I tried the daily turn on and this time I got something! The IBM Thinkpad logo came up although it was grainy. Then it went to the black screen it normally does with the cursor blinking in the top corner. Then it did the crazy eee RRR RRR RRR etc. page. I pressed esc and then it went to black screen for good. On that first screen it says at the bottom press F1 for IBM BIOS something and F2 for something else. I think Ill try F1 if I can get that up again. That sound like a good idea?

[JoeyJojo]

it isnt going to hurt it. without hooking up the external display, i cannot determine if it is a mainboard problem or not. it sounds like a loose cable, but could very easily be a bad lcd, backlight, inverter, or even HDD going bad.

turn you laptop on and notice the HDD led, does it blink a lot like it is accessing it, or does it just go off? it should blink a lot (still loading windows even tho you cannot se it) if this isnt happening, it could be a failing HDD. those things make a laptop go nuts.

if it isnt loading, it could also be the memory. should be a cover on the bottom. pop it open and take out the memory, clean it with alcohol, and reinsert it.

[LFADAM]

JoeyJojo, you and my dad were right. Hell yea for having a parent who has worked for IBM for over 30 years. He thought immediately it was the memory. Today I popped it out and cleaned it with an eraser (per his instructions) and reassembled it and ITS ALIVE!!! Thanks for the help.

[JoeyJojo]

sweet. the only thing that threw me about the memory is usually it will give you an audible code. glad you are back up and running tho =)