Laptop Question

[The Chef]

I bought a somewhat cheaper laptop a few months ago since I only needed it for internet and to write documents, so I didnt think I needed anything fancy, well now Im stuck and not sure what to do. I currently have an Acer Aspire laptop and everything was working fine until today that is. My wireless mouse went dead on me, I tried to activate the onboard mouse and it didnt work, so I restarted thinking it may work that way and suddenly now my laptop wont go past the Acer loading screen and there isnt anything I can think of to do. When I initially restarted the CPU it went to windows and then locked up there, and ever since it hasnt even gotten that far. I have tried hitting F8 to get in through safe mode and that hasnt worked, and since Im no computer wiz I have no clue what to try now so I turn to you guys here. On a side note, the hard drive indicator light is lighting up as if it is reading it but it doesnt do anything, when I reboot the acer loading screen pops up and instead of the progress bar starting at the beginning, it starts at the exact same spot where it locks up. Im about to throw the things in the trash, its becoming obvious that you get what you pay for I guess. Any ideas would be helpful at this point.

EDIT- Well I just booted it up after removing the hard drive from the CPU, it didnt lock up at that same point. It obviously couldnt boot to windows since that is stored on the hard drive but is this a sign that the hard drive is the culprit in this or am I really just that clueless to computers?

[Altimus]

Re: Laptop Question

You might have to reformat.

Also check if your notebook is reading the HDD in bios. You can get to the bios by hitting one of the F keys as soon as you turn on the computer. I think on the Acer it is the F2 key.

[The Chef]

Re: Laptop Question

The only way I can get into setup is to not have the hard drive in, no other way. When I have the hard drive in I can press "Esc" and it takes me to a screen that list my BIOS Version as 3.23, but nowhere on this screen does it mention anything about my hard drive at all, says what my processor is, processor speed, Ram passed and SRAM passed, then says system bios shadowed and video bios shadowed and thats it. Only option is to press F2 to enter setup but then it hangs and wont enter unless I unplug the hard drive again. Thanks for any help you can provide since Im clueless.

[shugknight]

Re: Laptop Question

I suggest to get a new harddrive and install a fresh xp on it. See if that works. Seems as if your harddrive is dead, which in this case is the result of getting a cheaper laptop. As long as it's not your motherboard, you should be ok with replacing the hd. Are you getting any beeps when you turn it on?

[The Chef]

Re: Laptop Question

I suggest to get a new harddrive and install a fresh xp on it. See if that works. Seems as if your harddrive is dead, which in this case is the result of getting a cheaper laptop. As long as it's not your motherboard, you should be ok with replacing the hd. Are you getting any beeps when you turn it on?

No beeps at all, its strange, was working one minute and down the next. From the sounds of it the hard drive is to blame, hopefully Acer can send me some sort of disc so I can get the OS back on the CPU since no discs came with the laptop when I purchased it. Has anyone heard anything about putting your HDD in the freezer for a few minutes? Someone told me this can fix a faulty HDD and Im not really sure how so I figured I would ask someone here, at this point its not like it can do any harm I suppose.