Please help Damsel in Distress!!!!!!!!

[little me]

I need urgent help (not for my mental incapabilities or alcholism due to freshers week!!). My laptop has decided not to work and I went to see a guy in the computer shop here at uni but he reckons that it will cost about £300-£400 to fix it!!!! He didn't even look at it though. It was working and I copied a CD, switched it off as normal and then when I went to switch it on as usual there was nothing on the screen although it was still whirring like usual. A flatmate plugged it into his monitor but it still didn't work so I haven't got a clue what is wrong with it (especially as I'm blonde and not good with anything technical!). Does anyone have any idea what might be wrong with it or somewhere I could take it to get it fixed or should I buy a new one? Also, will this mean that I've lost everything saved onto my laptop??
Help would be very much appreciated.
Many thanks
Sarah

[Purple]

i have 0 experience with laptops, i would assume there is something up with the graphics card, i know that wasnt helpful but this may be.. try getting your friend to plug in his network cable in to your laptop, if your laptop appears on his machine you may be able to recover your files. I am sure some clever person on here will tell you how to retrieve them without having actually shared them in the first place.

[CrimsonAvenger]

Difficult to tell exactly what the problem is without having the laptop in front of you.

Have seen this before with laptops at work and it typically was either a CPU or one of the daughter boards inside the laptop. Not saying thats what it is but possibly.

Does the laptop have any warranty on it ?

As for your data I'd be 95% sure that its actually safe. If necessary the HD could be pulled from the laptop and connected to a desktop pc in order to retrieve your data if said laptop has died, perhaps this could be done in the short term while you get it fixed maybe.......

Your best bet would be one of the bods at Uni. who will probably know more than the guys in the shop - try and get one of them to take a look.

Hope this helps.

[little me]

Yeah, thanks. I'm trying to find a nice computer geek who might sort it out for me in exchange for a Snaky B or two!!!

[Butuz]

Well - youve come to the right place if your shopping for computer geeks!

Not sure about nice ones though, i'm one nice one (probably, the nicest one), but im too far away to be of any use.

With regard to laptops, theyre nasty becuase usually all of the parts are physically built into the laptop as opposed to being screwed in like on a regular PC. This means that if something fails as it sounds like it has on yours, chances are its going to cost a lot to fix and it may be cheaper/better to buy a cheap new one or a secondhand one.

Good luck.

Butuz

[little me]

Well, just to let you know we took my laptop to a repair place where they looked at it and decided that it needed a new battery as the old one had failed and so was preventing it from working even when it was plugged into the mains. So, dad bought a new battery and they said that it would be fine. It isn't! Sometimes it worked, and now (3 days after getting the new battery) it has gone back to square one :-( I was not impressed! So now it's gone back again to the repair place but I am getting a new one to save all the hassle. Dad will use the old one if it gets repaired!!

[Purple]

Repair places never repair anything.. only charge you money, besides most of the guys in repair shops havn't got a clue. You would be better off sending it to someone on this board using special delivery and save yourself some cash.

[Boogle]

If the laptop is out of warranty I would get a new laptop, then get a student in the final year of comp sci to take the HD out, backup all your data to CDs, and then put it on the new laptop.

Or find someone on this forum knowledgable with laptops to take a look at it, but chances are something has broken, and since its a laptop it can't be fixed without great expense (all propietary).

My spelling sucks :|

[little me]

Yeah, I'm now getting a new one but also taken my old one back to get them to fix it as we have paid them to do the job and it hasn't been done! A lot of people on this forum have been very helpful and I thank them very much as not everyone has been so good.

[daniel_owen_uk]

May I make a little suggestion that nobody has, at first chance BACK UP YOUR WORK.

And in future make sure you do it regularly.

You don't want to end up writting a disertation (sp?), then loosing it all because your laptop dies.

[Agent]

I went to the uni computer shop there on one of the open days, and wasnt too impressed
If the worst comes to the worst, PM me. When im at home at the weekends, i can get to Aston uni in under an hour (dont live too far away). Dont mind having a look at it for you, but i am at uni myself now (Staff's).
Just gimmie plenty of notice though.

[little me]

May I make a little suggestion that nobody has, at first chance BACK UP YOUR WORK.

And in future make sure you do it regularly.

You don't want to end up writting a disertation (sp?), then loosing it all because your laptop dies.

Yeah thanks,

We had my laptop working for about an hour so I started backing up my work until it crashed and now can't get it to work again. I have most of my important stuff on CD now and will get the rest if we can get it to work again.

[little me]

I went to the uni computer shop there on one of the open days, and wasnt too impressed
If the worst comes to the worst, PM me. When im at home at the weekends, i can get to Aston uni in under an hour (dont live too far away). Dont mind having a look at it for you, but i am at uni myself now (Staff's).
Just gimmie plenty of notice though.

Thanks so much. I can't believe how many nice helpful people there are on hexus!! The laptop is in a repair place in Redditch and as we paid them to fix it but they didn't we are going to make sure that they do this time round and not charge us!

Thanks anyway for the offer!

[DR]

Could be overheating - doesn't sound like component failure to me.

[Shogun]

Thanks so much. I can't believe how many nice helpful people there are on hexus!! The laptop is in a repair place in Redditch and as we paid them to fix it but they didn't we are going to make sure that they do this time round and not charge us!

Thanks anyway for the offer!

Where abouts in Redditch? If you wanted me to I could always pop round to have a little looksie.

[little me]

Could be overheating - doesn't sound like component failure to me.

My dad has now decided that it is an overheating problem as when my brother had the laptop he had a similar problem and had to get some thermal paste or something for the heat sink or CPU? Something like that (It doesn't mean anything to me!).

It will be going back into Wytech in Redditch as soon as my dad can take it in.

Thanks again Shogun! You know where my dad lives and it is going to Wytech (not sure where it is) but as dad has paid to have it fixed there already, he will take it back until they do fix it!!