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Found an old laptop in my loft, it had no harddrive in it so I've swapped one in from an old smashed screen laptop.
Battery is charging, white power light flashes.
Laptop won't boot up at all.
Any fixes?
Should I have formatted the harddrive before installing?
Thank you
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This is often due to bad/unseated RAM modules. First thing you would want to check is if the RAM is loose by removing and reinstalling both modules, and see if the issue remains. If it does, then the modules may be bad. In which case, your best bet is to buy a 2x4GB DDR3L set (these will downgrade to 1.5V, and also run at 1.35V on capable computers). Normal "1,5V DDR3" just is not available, or it costs more today. This will often solve the problem.
If that doesn’t fix it, try to remove the CMOS battery to clear out any bad CMOS settings preventing it from booting. Some of the cheaper Toshibas may have this soldered, so bear that in mind -- you may be whipping the soldering iron out to try this. That said, even Toshiba realized how dumb this is and moved on themselves with almost all but their worst models. This one is socketed. Note: Test the battery while removed to see what the voltage is -- 2.6-2.8V is often "borderline", 2.9-3V is fine. 2.5V or below is usually considered "dead" and should be replaced.
If neither of these fix it, I wouldn’t spend much time on this laptop and just scrap it due to how you got it. Since you did get it as an abandoned machine, it may already be BER which is why they left it behind when they moved so be prepared for the worst.
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So changing the ram over to one from my old laptop got it booting up but the screen is blank.
Doesn't appear to have power or there's an issue with the old hard drive maybe having an older operating system on it.
Would that affect it?
- de Michael Gow
@Michael Gow The OS doesn't matter much because it will either boot or it won't, and you need to erase it anyway since the Win7 OEM machines rely on OEM specific SLIC keys (activation will not apply) or with Win8 the embedded key isn't the same - again, will not work due to different keys.
Try the hard drive and see, but if that doesn't help then if the CMOS battery doesn't work the board is no good, especially if you replace it to be sure. It's not unheard of on these consumer grade laptops to not like failing drive and have weird POST issues. Asus is also known for it, as well as some consumer grade (Read: Inspiron/XPS) Dells. Sometimes it's a bad LED backlight, but with an unknown history I wouldn't spend much on this - even if I know the odds are good unless the screen was a compatible one I had on hand. If you can afford to burn $50-60 and want to buy one, that's up to you.
In some cases, Dell doesn't have AS MANY (still possible with a really bad hard drive failure) problems on the SMB and enterprise machines (Vostro/Latitude/Precision) but there's a degree of BIOS resiliency that isn't always on the Inspiron or XPS lineup. They are still prone to CMOS RAM corruption issues even with the better BIOSes.
- de Nick
So it turns on and power light goes on.. ram and hard drive both from an old laptop... Just the screen doesn't boot up..
Could it be a loose ribbon wire or does it sound like it's past its time?
- de Michael Gow
@Michael Gow Did you try the CMOS battery trick, and replacing it? If not, go for that and see.
Otherwise if you can't afford to burn $50-60, don't spend much more time on an i3 Ivy Bridge laptop you found abandoned. It was probably left behind because they had it looked at and it's not economically repairable.
If someone gave me this and wanted me to have it, I would do exactly what I told you - RAM, CMOS battery and then dump it in with the other "parts bin" laptops. Something like this isn't worth spending more than a few minutes on stripping parts from other BER'd machines and a new CMOS battery ($4-5).
Still worth trying the battery, but not much beyond that. Sure you can check the cables as a curiosity, but beyond that and a CMOS battery... don't bother. In some cases, the primary battery is dead and stops it from booting - try that too as a final attempt.
- de Nick
Is that the battery that looks like a watch battery??
I've changed that out and everything boots up fine apart from no screen still.
- de Michael Gow
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