2 Laptops Not POSTING

ripken204

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Aug 24, 2007
Messages
1,427
this is VERY strange.

i time track meets along with one of my coaches..
my coach has 2 laptops that he uses to time with.

both have XP SP2 on them.

last night he ran a windows security update, an IBM A31, he left it to do the update, came back and the computer had a blank screen. he tried to restart it but no matter what, blank screen, doesnt even POST.

so today we had to run the meet with one laptop, an IBM R51.
it ran perfect for the whole meet. there was a rainstorm but we were under a tent, a little bit of water got onto the keyboard but just a little. it has had worse before.

so when my coach got home after the meet, he goes to turn his R51 on and was going to upload the meet results to his website, but as he was using Firefox, the computer all of a sudden BSODed. and now it also does not POST.

occasionally he would get 4 medium/long beeps coming from the R51. i had him take out the CMOS battery with no success.

He has not done anything with the A31 yet.
i was realling hoping that resetting the CMOS battery on the R51 would work but it didnt..

what else can we possibly do?
we need both of these laptops for timing meets and without them we're pretty much screwed, especially my coach.

it is just so odd that both of them are experiencing the same type of hardware problems in the same day.

both of the laptops were hooked up to the same network last night, my coach's home network. i guess there could be some sort of a hardware virus but what! and how would i go about fixing it...

i have not tried replacing it yet, the battery for the R51 is really strange, its not the normal one.
for the A31 when i started is up, the lights for the power,hdd,etc all went on, then a second later only the power light was still on.
so there is no hdd activity meaning its not booting up windows.
 
According to IBM's beep error code list for your R51, 4 beeps indicates a problem with System board (Security chip). Symptoms for your A31 point to a possible mobo failure as well. Sorry but it doesn't like it's gonna be a cheap or easy fix either way.
 
If they were both hooked up at the same house it is possible a power surge or something messed them up.

Also I will say your comment that it has had "worse before" refering to water getting on it makes me wonder.
 
lol, ya they have been much worse before.
about a month or so ago we were timing a meet where it decided to rain really hard and thunder for about 2 hours.. and having a hole on the top of the tent doesnt help much.

it would be horrible if both motherboards are dead :(
 
and now the A31 is working, lol.
i guess it was all due to the insane humidity these last few days.
 
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