Vista Laptop Not Booting - Again! (Part 2)

CONTINUING SAGA...

As I was telling you earlier, I managed after a few attempts to get my laptop to boot and work just fine from the state of turning itself on, blinking and disk spinning, then turning itself off again! That was really weird. I also told you I did not run a disk check!

THE NEXT MORNING, A RUDE AWAKENING


The next morning I was up for a rude awakening. Previous night I left the  laptop in the hibernate mode. I pressed the on button and, darn, it got even worse than last night! This time, the "on" light, and the "caps lock" light, and the "numeric lock" light came on, but not the disk light, and there was NO SOUND from the disk either! Wow. It got even worse than last night! The computer is not booting up! What to do?

COMPUTER WILL NOT BOOT, SHOWS BLANK SCREEN, NO DISK LIGHT

This time, computer did not get turned off by itself. It just stayed on, and on, and on, with the blank screen and disk not making any noises. Just silence. That was terrible. Luckily, I knew from past experience about laptop not booting and showing blank screen that patience helps and that I needed to wait until I hear the fan come on and I may be able to fix the computer not booting. Or so I hoped.

A HALF HOUR LATER, THE FAN!

It took over a half an hour before the sound of the fan announced something has changed. The DVD player ( with no DVD inserted ) started to do its light show with the DVD light. Best of all, the hard disk light came on! I pushed the DVD eject button and the tray did come out. So that's different. A positive change. What next? I turn the computer off and back on, still nothing, this Vista is not booting up.

IF YOU HEAR A CLICKING SOUND FROM A HARD DISK...

I keep it on and, lo and behold, 3 minutes later, the hard disk light and the sound of the hard disk came on. That was good as a sign of life, however the sound of the hard disk was like a click. That can not be good.


BACK IN THE SAME GAME OF TURN OFF TURN ON

In fact, I got back to the game reported earlier, computer shutting itself off, by itself! Then back on, just like last night! The DVD light was blinking, even though the tray was out. Wow. The F8 didn't help this time. Weird! Now, the computer turned itself off just about once a minute. Then right back on! I just let it be. Just let it be.

PATIENCE HELPS, AGAIN

Remarkably, after about one long hour of waiting, the laptop came back up, took up the hibernate file, and restored the Vista as if nothing happened in the last couple of hours! Quite amazing. Yet, not quite unexpected as such miraculous healings of my laptop occurred previously, just about a month ago. As you may remember back then computer wouldn't boot after I turned the computer off during a disk check!

LAPTOP IS BACK UP, WORKING FLAWLESSLY

After giving thanks to the lord of miracles, I immediately executed disk checks of both my C: drive and the D: drive.  The checks showed nothing wrong. So far my computer is running flawlessly. Just another day in the la-la land of laptop happenings and just another simple yet exciting and quite miraculous resurrection of an almost dead computer.

WHAT ABOUT YOUR COMPUTER?

What about you? Did you have similar symptoms with your computer? I'd love to hear from you. Did the story above help you solve your "windows computer not booting" problem? As simple as it may be, it may not be the obvious choice of trying to solve the problem. As one of the younger commentators says, they TRIED EVERYTHING to get his laptop to boot ( and he really needs it as it's hard to NOT play a video game after playing for five years, pretty much daily ). And his mom won't call the HP as the laptop is out of warranty! This example, and others, show that instead of trying EVERYTHING, sometimes you must do almost NOTHING instead. To solve this problem I just listened to what was happening with the machine and allowed the computer to come back up. All I did was patiently wait. Hardly the stuff video games are made of. Let me know if  you had similar symptoms and if this story helped you get your computer to boot! Just leave me a comment below, either way!

P.S.: Although I trust miracles will happen again and my laptop will be safe, I'm diving into the land of backups. I am starting to be serious about making backups. More later!

RELATED POSTS

Part One of This Post - Computer Not Booting, Turns Itself Off And On

Vista or Windows 7 Computer Will Not Resume From Sleep, Suspend or Hibernate

An excellent guide to POST (power on self test) and cleaning your computer to prevent boot problems