Laptop not starting


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Hi,

So my friends laptop, which is a Compaq CQ60, stopped booting the other day. Basically what happens is as soon as you try turning it on, it shows a black screen with a flashing cursor in the top left corner. No boot screen is shown, just the blank screen.

I have taken the hard drive out and checked it and it has no problems at all, I have also checked the ram but that doesn't seem to be the problem either.

Any suggestions? The weird thing is I cant even get it to go to the boot menu to allow me to try boot off a CD to check the system, another weird thing I noticed was when on the blank screen, pressing keys does nothing except if you hit Ctrl+Alt+Del it flashes the screen white and then goes back to the blank screen with the flashing cursor,

Any help would be greatly appreciated, Thanks, Tim

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Okay I tried this fix and no luck, any other suggestions? On that fix, so you know the battery is dead in the machine, would this make a difference?

Thanks, Any suggestions at all are greatly suggested, Tim

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When you cleared the CMOS, did you also take the RAM out? If so, I would let them sit out for a good 30min and while in that proccess hold down the power button for about a 1min or so every now and then. Lets see if completly clearing it will do any good.

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There are two things that leap to mind. First and a bit daft but there aren't any usb drives connected are there? I presumed not since you have stripped the drive out etc but thought I'd mention it. In the old days this might have been a floppy left in a drive. Ah memories....

Second. problem with boot options. Have you tried spamming the F1 or F10 keys after turn on? One of these should be the bios key for that laptop (from a quick google could be another). Once in check the boot options

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  • 2 weeks later...

When you cleared the CMOS, did you also take the RAM out? If so, I would let them sit out for a good 30min and while in that proccess hold down the power button for about a 1min or so every now and then. Lets see if completly clearing it will do any good.

Leaving the RAM in or out when clearing the CMOS won't make a difference, RAM doesn't hold any data in it when the power source is totally removed.

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Leaving the RAM in or out when clearing the CMOS won't make a difference, RAM doesn't hold any data in it when the power source is totally removed.

No but he needs to remove the RAM because it is more than likely the problem.

Its either RAM or HDD - the CMOS battery idea is stupid.

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