The laptop funs only run when needed. So when you initially turn the system on, they probably won't be running. It sounds like you may have a MB fault, although MB faults like this are not usually intermittent. And 15 seconds sounds like a long time for the lights to be on with the system doing nothing. Was the system previously running hot? You could try reseating the cpu as well. Also try running the system as bare as possible by removing the battery, cdrom, modem, unplug the keyboard and palmrest. If you have two sticks of memory, try removing one and alternate between the two, as well as the memory slots to rule out a memory problem. If nothing works, i'd be pretty convinced the MB is at fault.
Came back to it this morning, tried turning it on and ... it worked perfectly, but no doubt it will decide to "die" again soon.
It does usually happen after long periods of use, when it is quite hot, so I'm inclined to think it is a motherboard fault, I'm looking into replacing it, or possibly just buying another old laptop to save the hassle.
This just started happening to my 4100 a few weeks ago (just before a long trip - wouldn't you know it :-()
The symptoms I see are that it turns one unreliably. When it does turn on a boot, it may run for a few hours or just a few minutes and then hang hard - as in I can not get it to turn off without drastic measures.
After having been on for just a minute or so, and turning it off normally (telling the OS to shutdown), it will not reboot or turn on and boot again for some time.
It is rather interesting that the lights for the laptop (the caps/num/scroll lock lights) will turn on along with the power light and the hard drive light but not turn off when a failed power up happens. At that point I need to hold the power button down for a few seconds to get the system to turn off. Sometimes, when a failed power up happens, the keyboard lights do not get stuck on but the power and HDD lights to get stuck on.
The really annoying thing is that this started happening just a few weeks after my 3-year extended service contract expired!
When it does boot, I have run memory tests (MEMTEST86) and CPU tests (Intel CPU Validation) along with some other diagnostics. When the system does not hang, the tests all run to completion without errors. (When the system hangs, nothing can be done and no display output can be seen)
My 4100 has the 1GHz P-III-M with the 1600x1200 ATI Radeon video. My only changes to the system have been to add RAM and larger hard drives.
From the way things are acting, I would think it is either the CPU or the Northbridge or something in that path (not much between them)
The reason I believe that is that the video does not initialize during any failed boots - not even the backlight or any video signal. As far as I can tell, that would put the (albeit intermittent) problem somewhere between the CPU and the ATI part (or maybe in the CPU or ATI part)
What I would like to know is if there is some way to diagnose this a bit further - I would love it if it was just the CPU...
snapohead
1.2K Posts
0
June 6th, 2005 23:00
mad_hatter
2 Posts
0
June 7th, 2005 22:00
It does usually happen after long periods of use, when it is quite hot, so I'm inclined to think it is a motherboard fault, I'm looking into replacing it, or possibly just buying another old laptop to save the hassle.
Thanks for your help.
DusterBar
1 Message
0
July 11th, 2005 21:00
The symptoms I see are that it turns one unreliably. When it does turn on a boot, it may run for a few hours or just a few minutes and then hang hard - as in I can not get it to turn off without drastic measures.
After having been on for just a minute or so, and turning it off normally (telling the OS to shutdown), it will not reboot or turn on and boot again for some time.
It is rather interesting that the lights for the laptop (the caps/num/scroll lock lights) will turn on along with the power light and the hard drive light but not turn off when a failed power up happens. At that point I need to hold the power button down for a few seconds to get the system to turn off. Sometimes, when a failed power up happens, the keyboard lights do not get stuck on but the power and HDD lights to get stuck on.
The really annoying thing is that this started happening just a few weeks after my 3-year extended service contract expired!
When it does boot, I have run memory tests (MEMTEST86) and CPU tests (Intel CPU Validation) along with some other diagnostics. When the system does not hang, the tests all run to completion without errors. (When the system hangs, nothing can be done and no display output can be seen)
My 4100 has the 1GHz P-III-M with the 1600x1200 ATI Radeon video. My only changes to the system have been to add RAM and larger hard drives.
From the way things are acting, I would think it is either the CPU or the Northbridge or something in that path (not much between them)
The reason I believe that is that the video does not initialize during any failed boots - not even the backlight or any video signal. As far as I can tell, that would put the (albeit intermittent) problem somewhere between the CPU and the ATI part (or maybe in the CPU or ATI part)
What I would like to know is if there is some way to diagnose this a bit further - I would love it if it was just the CPU...