Laptop hangs on bootup

[anlaoch]

Hi.

I've a compaq presario v5000 which for some time now has been hanging on bootup. When you switch it on, it will occassionaly boot, but mostly just freezes. All you get is a black screen, and the sound of the hdd spinning.

I've researched the problem, and the concensus out there tends towards loose / faulty memory modules. However, I've refitted the memory modules a couple of times, and run the memtest86+ iso cd and it gave the memory a clean bill of health. The only other information I can supply is that the cooling fan shoots out a whoosh of air on bootup, and then stops (normal enough I think).

Also, immediately after completing a single pass of memtest86+, the machine froze upon reboot. Doesn't make any sense to me that the memory would be at fault there.

Could this be an overheating issue? (Although I don't suspect so since the fan fires up at every boot stage). I've checked for viruses and malware, and besides, it won't even let a boot cd work. Is there anything else I can try?

All help much appreciated.

Thanks.

[tain]

Sounds like an unseated card/device to me. Disconnect all of your cards and cables then reconnect them securely. Don't forget to discharge static first

[anlaoch]

Thanks Tain.

Do you think the cpu could be overheating? Would it be worth cleaning / reapplying thermal paste to the heat sink?

Regards.

[anlaoch]

Folks,

Thanks for the advice. Tried both suggestions. Completely stipped the machine down. Cleaned away thermal paste, reapplied paste. Reseated RAM / Video cards. Same results. Any other ideas what this could be?

Thanks again.

[James_A]

Going back to your first post, how long did you run MemTest for?

I once repaired an IBM laptop that ran MemTest perfectly to start with (so I thought the RAM was OK) but it then showed errors after about an hour. To cut a long story short, it turned out that one of the SO-DIMMs was fried after all.

.

[tain]

Thanks Tain.

Do you think the cpu could be overheating? Would it be worth cleaning / reapplying thermal paste to the heat sink?

Regards.

Not likely in this scenario. It is dying too quickly. As long as the fan is running then it would generally take longer for a CPU to burn up.

Going back to your first post, how long did you run MemTest for?

I once repaired an IBM laptop that ran MemTest perfectly to start with (so I thought the RAM was OK) but it then showed errors after about an hour. To cut a long story short, it turned out that one of the SO-DIMMs was fried after all.

.

Good point. Make sure the test goes all the way through at least once.

[anlaoch]

I ran the memtest for a single pass, this took about 40 minutes. I might let it go around again a couple of times just to be sure. Thanks for the pointers.

[Tripredacus]

If you have the ability to view an offline NTFS disk, you might try enabling boot-logging.