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Computer Problems
Computer is Dell Inspiron 9100.
So here's the story. I was riding my unicycle and decided to jump off a curb and rolled. My computer was in my backpack and it hit the ground a couple times. My computer was in hibernate. The power booted up, but the boot screen was not displayed and what I got was two flashes off light from the hard drive light and two beeps. The fans worked and the computer powered up, but there was no display on the screen. I took the computer to some guys in the area to look at the computer. They took it apart and found no cracks in the motherboard and reseated everything. It still did not work. Sometime later, weeks or months, I happened to press the power up button again and it booted all the way to the desktop. It recovered from when it was put into hibernate that time before. After that, I had not moved my computer much and it worked most of the time. A couple times it would not boot up like it had before (two flashes and two beeps). A little good shake and it started up again. But now when I go to my girlfriend's I put my computer in hibernate and it boots up from hibernate fine when I get over there. However, I shut down the computer and bring it back to my room and it does not boot up again (two flashes and two beeps). Is it a motherboard defect (even though the computer guys did not find any) or loose cable (which would have been put back when it was put back together) or perhaps the hard drive?
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The two beeps signify that there were errors upon boot-up and the system board couldn't initialize all hardware. I would be willing to bet that its the video card and what you have experienced comes from moving the unit. There is most likely a bent piece, frame, thermal displacement arm, or something else that dislodges a component when closed and transported. The problem is that you couldn't tell which one it is without knowing how much of an angle these pieces are supposed to sit naturally.
Does the laptop sit evenly on all four corners? If it doesn't, even the slightest bit this can be the problem. Also, after it was assembled after this first happen did it beep at all when restarted? Or did nothing happen? If this is a temperature issue (as expressed in the previous post) this could be a combination of problems not easily solved.
- The computer does sit on all fours, but when I go to my girlfriend's a boot it up from hibernate, it starts up fine. And then I come back to my room after shutting it down and set it on all fours, it will not boot up at all. And after the computer guys reassembled the computer, it appeared as if nothing had happened; it still did that same two flashes and two beeps. Perhaps they missed something critical, but they did not find any cracks in the motherboard and everything was reseated as far as they told me.
- As far as I know, this reproduced the error. I removed the hard drive (the two beeps seem to signify that there is no boot device) and I disconnected the ribbon cables to get the video. So I guess the IDE cables from the hard drive are bad or the hard drive is bad and the ribbon cables or the video card is being twitchy. Does this seem correct?
With the two beeps "No boot device found" should appear on your display. If you have no display then I would refer back to the video card as the primary faulty device.
It is also possible that one of the connectors to the HDD was stressed as there aren't any cables into the MB, it is a hard plug that comes out from the motherboard. This problem is equally so with the videocard, it could be good but the connectors are stressed causing the intermittent problem that goes away after everything has been reseated.
Problems like this are very hard to trace as they don't show themselves in any obvious fashion. In the short run, I would turn this into a 'desktop' unit and use a thumb drive to carry information back and forth. Also, look into having it more thoroughly looked over by a laptop tech so they can test the connections and find out if it is the video card or the motherboard.

Sofu
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Posted September 18th, 2008 03:00