My friend is having a problem with his laptop. It just started 2 days ago. Bascially it won't turn on and stay on. You press the power button it glows like it's turning on then 1 second later it turns off. Doesn't make a difference if it's with the battery and plugged in or without the battery and plugged in. It turns on for a second or two (literally) then instantly turns off. What can be causing this?
zopzop, look at this cNet forum thread: Laptop troubleshooting: Laptop won't turn on?, especially Post #9 and possibly Post #11. Post back and let us know if any of those steps fixed the issue. If not, posting the laptop's manufacturer and model number could be helpful.
Nope none of those steps worked. It's a Compaq Presario F700. One thing though. When I was following the steps in post 11 on the link you gave me (removing the memory and replacing it again), I noticed an empty space where it looks like a battery should be. By battery I mean those little round batteries. I asked my friend about it and he told me something "fell out" of his laptop. Could that be what's causing this?
zopzop, here's a direct PDF link to his User Manual. Go to Page 44 and there you will find the instructions on replacing the RTC (Real Time Clock) Battery and Part Number. JR
I don't think the problem is in the RTC battery. Without it, the CMOS will be cleared on every power-off, so you would have to enter the CMOS data manually on each boot-up. This is the only downside of missing RTC battery afaik, the PC itself will just fail to boot, but it will stay on. A much more menacing beast lurks here.
Seer, I don't doubt that a bug could be lallygagging somewhere, yet from the beginning it sounded like a dropped laptop, and reading that something "fell out" implies a drop, which could affect many other parts as well. An RTC battery might be the cheapest repair. As I understand it and correct me if I'm wrong, in order to boot, CMOS RAM is needed for a computer to know a hard drive's configuration, and if this laptop (circa 2007) has the built-in RAM in its RTC chip, the battery would assist the BIOS during the boot process.
Hey JRViejo. Yes, you are right, RTC battery will help CMOS to retain data (date, time, HDD info, boot order, etc.). But it will not affect powerup process. You will fail to boot without CMOS, but the PC wil stay on, saying for example "failed to boot, no boot device detected", or something like that. This PC is powering off after 2 seconds, which implies (to me) that something different than BIOS problem is at large here.
Hello guys sorry for the late reply, it's been a busy weekend. Ok I'm gonna tell him to order that part JRViejo mentioned in his link. I'll let you know if it works.
