Tech support request
Aaargh.
My girlfriend's laptop's died. It's an EiSystems model 4413, a shade over two years old, running WinXP. It's been increasingly flaky of late: it gets very hot, the battery life is measured in seconds, and the backlight's very angle-sensitive. Today, it exhibited the following symptoms:
- After being on for four or five hours, it BSODed (the last thing that had been done was to turn Spider off, a few seconds previously). The BSOD was of the "Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer" variety. We don't know the exact error message: my flatmate (the only one around at the time) thinks it contained the word "kernel" - possibly STOP 0x0000007F (UNEXPECTED_KERNEL_MODE_TRAP)? Needless to say, we don't have any of the other information shown.
- It didn't turn itself off, so he held down the "Off" switch for a few seconds until it did. Then he turned it back on again.
- It came back on for a few seconds, then turned itself off without going through the boot process.
- He left it to cool down for a quarter of an hour, then turned it back on again. It booted successfully, then BSODed again (same message) about ten seconds after Windows came up. The fan stayed on for about a quarter of an hour, in spite of the black screen. The on/off switch had no effect.
- He left it to cool down again, and tried to switch it on. Nothing happened. The "machine plugged in" LED was blank, regardless of the plugged-inness of the machine. The machine was totally unresponsive. At this point he called me.
- We left it for another hour or so, then tried again. Nothing. Currently it's unplugged.
So, where do I go from here? What do I do to diagnose/fix the problem? Any ideas?
My girlfriend's laptop's died. It's an EiSystems model 4413, a shade over two years old, running WinXP. It's been increasingly flaky of late: it gets very hot, the battery life is measured in seconds, and the backlight's very angle-sensitive. Today, it exhibited the following symptoms:
- After being on for four or five hours, it BSODed (the last thing that had been done was to turn Spider off, a few seconds previously). The BSOD was of the "Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer" variety. We don't know the exact error message: my flatmate (the only one around at the time) thinks it contained the word "kernel" - possibly STOP 0x0000007F (UNEXPECTED_KERNEL_MODE_TRAP)? Needless to say, we don't have any of the other information shown.
- It didn't turn itself off, so he held down the "Off" switch for a few seconds until it did. Then he turned it back on again.
- It came back on for a few seconds, then turned itself off without going through the boot process.
- He left it to cool down for a quarter of an hour, then turned it back on again. It booted successfully, then BSODed again (same message) about ten seconds after Windows came up. The fan stayed on for about a quarter of an hour, in spite of the black screen. The on/off switch had no effect.
- He left it to cool down again, and tried to switch it on. Nothing happened. The "machine plugged in" LED was blank, regardless of the plugged-inness of the machine. The machine was totally unresponsive. At this point he called me.
- We left it for another hour or so, then tried again. Nothing. Currently it's unplugged.
So, where do I go from here? What do I do to diagnose/fix the problem? Any ideas?