Arhghghghg

[Chris]

This weekend my stupid computer overheated or got a power surge or shorted itself out or otherwise did something retarded and now the damn thing won't power on at all. Has anyone else with a laptop experienced something similar? I honestly think it overheated in some way since when it shut down for its final time it was pretty damn hot.

[BigJKO]

Could've damaged the power supply unit? That's some bad shit.

[Chris]

Is that sort of thing expensive to repair?

[tabacco]

Hey, welcome to the club! My machine and Sara's both crapped themselves this weekend!

[Jake]

[tabacco]

...says the man whose G3 also crapped itself awhile ago.

[Chris]

Hey, welcome to the club! My machine and Sara's both crapped themselves this weekend!

It's the worst club of them all!

[Jake]

that computer was 5 years old. and the HDs and power supply still work ¬ ¬ ...

quiet.

[ysbreker]

If your battery is dead, then you're pretty much screwed, because those things are expen$$$ive. (just like basically every other part of your laptop that's inside the case)

[Chris]

I think it's a more problem than battery failure, because it still doesn't work if I have it plugged into an outlet (whether the battery is in the machine or not).

[Lechimp]

hahahaha, at least I can play more than 5 games and my mouse has more than one button

[Chris]

And you probably have a floppy drive.

[shbazjinkens]

My roomates portable burned out one of its cards due to overheating.

They need to be positioned upside down or otherwise to allow air to adequately circulate through both sides of the machine. They aren't called laptop computers anymore, but portable. The reason for this is that the vents on the bottom are critical for keeping it cool. Usually having it on a flat table will suffice, though mine still gets pretty hot.

Anyway, yeah, you're screwed. Something critical has probably burned up. Most portables will automatically shut off when the processor gets too hot, so I'd look elsewhere.. your power supply or internal power circuitry are good places to start.

If you don't have a warranty open it up and see if you can see any chips or transistors with melted spots on them.

[Intrepid Homoludens]

Is this some kind of conspiracy? I got up today, tried logging on, only to find out my computer won't get online. I checked everything - Internet connection, cables, router, even did a system restore back to last week - but nothing. I've been going back and forth b/t my sister's and niece's rig (both of which are fine). WTF is going on?

I also checked for any background programs running that may be interfering with the connection and discovered several under the category of 'SP2'. Shit, does this have anything to do with it? I've been avoiding anything SP2 from downloading but apparently my XP hasn't. Any clues from y'all would be greatly appreciated.

[manny_c44]

Download 'Ad-Aware' if in doubt. I'm too lazy to get a link, but you should find it easily. It works well.

[Intrepid Homoludens]

Are you responding to my post, manny?

[edlglide]

Don't be so sure that anything has been seriously damaged with your laptop. This has happened to me before -- it overheated and shut down, and then would refuse to power back up for hours and hours. I finally got around to taking it somewhere the next day, and it powered up just fine and has worked excellently since then. It may just need a while to cool down before it will work again, as mine did.

EDIT: And yeah, Trep, Ad-Aware or Spyware Blaster are good programs to clean up any background programs that are monitoring/tinkering with your Internet. I prefer Ad-Aware, but for some reason it won't work on my desktop and I had to resort to the Spyware program.

[Kolzig]

I don't have a laptop but still what a coincidence, my computer has been overheating lately also.

I suspect my power supply is damaged somehow, the fan doesn't work properly.

I've ordered a new power supply today and also an extra fan to be put in the case to cool the computer more.

Bye bye 100 euros...

[Twilo]

my PSU burned out a couple of weeks back, new ones are pretty cheap (mine was €45, but they're cheaper if you buy from an online retailer). If you're buying a new psu, it's safest to go for high wattage (400W or more).

Laptop PSU's are a bit of a foggy zone for me, but they're probably proprietry (dell or sony or whatever) and that'll up the cost.

If your warranty is gone, you should try opening her up and see if it smells of ozone. If you have a post code display thing (sort of a blow by blow analysis of what your motherboard is doing during bootup) you might be able to see just when it is that your computer stops booting

[Twilo]

Is this some kind of conspiracy? I got up today, tried logging on, only to find out my computer won't get online. I checked everything - Internet connection, cables, router, even did a system restore back to last week - but nothing. I've been going back and forth b/t my sister's and niece's rig (both of which are fine). WTF is going on?

Try going to the command line, or "Run" item from the start menu and typing "services.msc" (without the quotes).

this will open up the Windows services manager.

Have a look at anything that's "Started" and see if it's in any way suspicious looking. (eg missing a proper service description, or the filename is all CAPS or something). Be careful not to turn of RPC or anything related to that, or you can cause yourself a little bit of trouble.

Anything that mentions FTP or IRC is probably being used by someone to mess about on your computer.

Try Zonealarm's firewall (rather than the windows XP one).

Have a look at your device manager (properties on My Computer) and see if your network card or onboard networking is disabled for some reason (could be drivers, could be firmware getting confused).

Can also try disabling your network connection, and then re-enabling it (network connections from control panel).

Also you can try "ipconfig /renew *" from the command line

[baconian]

Chris - if it's a dell, this might be useful:

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=dell+power+supply+&btnG=Search+News

[tabacco]

This too

[Erwin_Br]

If it's not beeping or flashing some leds then it's indeed the power supply. These things are a hell of a lot easier to fix when you've got a normal PC. And cheaper too.

Most often it's just a fuse in the power supply that needs to be replaced. Here, it'll cost you 15 to 20 bucks if you take it to one of those general repair places. (Y'know, a shop that repairs broken TV's and radio's and shit)

--Erwin

[Nick]

SpyBot - Search & Destroy is also a popular one. Many people seem to recommend installing both that one and Ad-Aware, although I've been just fine with SpyBot.

Yeah, I was just using spybot but now I'm using both. I've decided ad aware is better but both find stuff the other doesn't.

[Erwin_Br]

SpyBot - Search & Destroy is also a popular one. Many people seem to recommend installing both that one and Ad-Aware, although I've been just fine with SpyBot.

I read in some magazine, that installing both isn't a very good idea. They'll be in each others way, or something, which means both programs won't run at their best.

--Erwin