Re: Need help, laptop will not boot

The problem sounds like a dead motherboard but since your USB hub is acting
funny, just for grins try to disconnect the hub and see if it will boot
correctly. I had a very similar issue and the hub was the problem.

"Cloudchaser the Red Wolf furry"
<CloudchasertheRedWolffurry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:04F8822F-7B09-40E0-8A03-012753185677@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hi! :-)

Making this post using my 4.5 year old but still functional old laptop
(good
thing I held on to it)

When I get home from work in the morning and set my WinXP Home laptop up
(bought new in Sep '06) for home use, I have to wait until it's booted to
plug in the external, powered external USB that my external, powered hard
drive (and mouse, printer and keyboard) is plugged into because my laptop
won't boot if the USB hub is plugged in, even if nothing is plugged into
the
hub.

Every time I do that, the autoplay kicks in when the external hard drive
is
detected and I hit cancel in the window that appears to get the autoplay
to
stop. Monday morning, I decided I was gonna put a stop to that. I opened
Tweak UI and went to my computer/autoplay/drives. I made sure to uncheck
only the box for the external hard drive and then hit apply followed by
hitting OK. I then went to My Compter, right clicked on the external HD's
icon, selected Properties, Autoplay, set the Content Type to Mixed
Content,
clicked Select An Action To Perform, selected Take No Action and clicked
OK.

A few hours later, as I was about to go to bed, the power goes out, most
likely due to the very windy conditions because on an incoming front.
Storms
were already long gone and skies were clear, could not have been
lightning.
I turned my laptop off, which I usually leave on, so the battery wouldn't
be
drained and went to bed.

When I got up after a good rest, I tried to turn my laptop on and nothing
happened. All the lights that usually come on when I hit the power button
with the main/internal hard drive light being the only exception, but
nothing
else happened, even the screen stayed dark.

Several times, I tried disconnecting the ac adapter and battery and
holding
the power button for 10 seconds before putting the battery and ac adapter
back in and trying to start normrally. No results. I called Compaq
support
and the tech had me do the same thing for 30 seconds. No results. Then
he
had me to remove both RAM chips as well as the main hard drive and put
them
back in. Still no results.

During all this, there's not one indication by the main hard drive light
that something is happening. The light never comes on at all. I have
concluded that when I unchecked the box to turn off the autoplay for the
external hard drive as described above, either I accidentally unchecked
the
box for the main hard drive as well or for some crazy reason, Tweak UI
glitched and also turned off the autoplay for the main hard drive.

Am I correct? If so, how do I get the main hard drive running again so my
laptop will boot up? If not, what do I do?

Much thanx in advance :-)


.