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You are here: Experts > Computing/Technology > Focus on PC Support > PC hardware--CPU & Motherboard & RAM > Laptop won't boot?
Expert: Keith - 11/3/2009
Question
I'm not sure if this is in the right category. My laptop (a Compaq Evo n610c, running Windows XP) has been working fine until I tried to turn it on today. It showed the windows start up screen, gave me the usual black screen with "invalid boot" (although it's been doing this since I first got it, it's a used laptop, I thought I'd mention it anyway just in case) and then the screen turned black and beeped continuously. It wouldn't do anything else and finally I had to turn it off by the power button. I waited until it cooled down and turned it back on, and this time it gave me that black "windows had a problem" screen with different options to boot it up. I chose "start windows normally" just to see if it had been a one time fluke, but once again it turned black and beeped until I turned it off.
I started it in safe mode on the third try and it worked. The first thing I did was a system restore back one day to see if it was a registry problem, although I haven't made any registry changes, downloaded anything, or done anything that would've caused such a problem. All I've done for the past two weeks is online school homework and word document related things. When I told my mom it would only start up in safe mode, she told me this meant it was a driver problem and downloaded Bellarc Advisor, which supposedly goes through your whole system and tells you everything you're missing. Bellarc reported that everything was fine, so I figured (just a wild guess) that it may be a virus. I did a thorough systems can using Avast! Antivirus, which has worked well for me so far, and it reported nothing except a file that it couldn't scan, which had 'boot' in its address.
(on a side note, I tried deleting this file once before, thinking it was a virus, and my computer went haywire for one boot, then fixed itself. Could this be related?)
I'm still in safe mode and at a loss for what to do. I searched the internet for people having similar problems, and they all claim that it's something relating to the memory or RAM. Would the memory become corrupt or stop working just like that? I hope it's not the memory, or anything that requires money... but if you have any idea, could you please tell me? Note that it's only done this today, when I tried to start it up. I can't think of anything I could've done that could possibly have caused this, because I've only done two things for the past month: Go to four specific sites and type in wordpad.
Answer
In the boot up screen it should have what button to push to enter setup or BIOS. We need to find out what kind of BIOS you have (there are only a few different brands). After finding out we can look up the beep code. The continuous beeping has a meaning. Here is a link to many of the beep codes. http://www.pchell.com/hardware/beepcodes.shtml
Most of the time sequenced beeps mean hardware failure of some kind. And like someone said the most common cause is failure of the RAM. If there are two sticks of RAM in your system it just may be one of them that is bad due to the fact that you can work in safe mode (uses less RAM). If there is only one stick of RAM in your system I doubt it is the RAM. Keep in mind the driver idea could still be right because hardware depends on drivers to interface with the rest of the computer. If this is the case, I'm not sure how the drivers (most likely display drivers) would have gotten changed but stranger things have happened.
Not to insult your intelligence, but only to clarify the most basic thing. Does your laptop have the function button where you can press fn + F8 (or one of the other F's) to turn the attached monitor off and an external monitor on? This is disabled sometimes in safe mode and only the attached monitor will work.
Let me know if you find anything out by the information I've given and we'll go from there.
Keith
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