Laptop not starting up

My step father's laptop is having problems starting up.

When you turn it on the fans will come on and you can hear it trying to start up but the screen is blank and then after a few seconds it shuts back off.

I believe it's the hard drive, but I am not sure.

The laptop is a little over 5 years old and is a Gateway 400VTX.

Hook the laptop up to another screen. I don't need to explain what's wrong when there will be no image on the screen, right?

Well here is the thing it turns on for a couple of seconds then shuts off before the screen can even turn on.

It makes me think it's the hard drive.

Did you plug it on another screen?

I don't see what plugging it into another screen would do.

If it's starting for like 5 seconds that's hardly enough time for the screen to load up. If it shuts off before then I would say yeah it's probably the hard drive.

I had the same problem with a desktop awhile ago. Turns out my parents bought me a really old HD off of craigs list and it just died or something.

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Originally Posted by VaanityX

I don't see what plugging it into another screen would do.

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This would rule out that the GPU is broke. Most laptops don't exactly have decent cooling.

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Originally Posted by SnOwBunZz

This would rule out that the GPU is broke. Most laptops don't exactly have decent cooling.

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Well there is not enough time to check. The laptop shuts off before the screen can be turned on. If it was the graphics card I think there would be a beep code to warn me about it.

My laptop doesn't beep on the POST, so it's possible it won't when my GPU fries either.

I really doubt it's the HDD though. Your screen wouldn't turn off after you boot but it'd show there isn't a hdd found message on the screen.

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Originally Posted by SnOwBunZz

My laptop doesn't beep on the POST, so it's possible it won't when my GPU fries either.

I really doubt it's the HDD though. Your screen wouldn't turn off after you boot but it'd show there isn't a hdd found message on the screen.

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Well my screen was never on to begin with when starting it up. The laptop was being used and then just suddenly shut off. I will try your idea but I


Edit: When I tried plugging in the monitor it turned on and showed that windows was booting up but then after the loading screen for windows boot the monitor shut off and nothing else happened.

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Originally Posted by SnOwBunZz

A live cd is a disc with an OS of its own running straight from the cd without installing on the HDD.

It can be useful for when you cannot boot into windows anymore and has a wide variaty of uses.

System rescue cd is a decent one, and as the name suggest you need to burn it before you can use it. :/

edit: or if you are lazy (and have time, which you said you didn't have though) I'd go to a computer shop and let it check though. I'm pretty sure that by this stage your laptop has some hardware damage.

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Oh now I know what you mean. Yah I will try that later. My step father is going to replace his laptop with a newer one later anyway since it's 5 years old.

I just wanted to figure out what the problem was so I know which parts of his old laptop can still be used.