Laptop Hangs On Start Or Restart

When I worked for a major corporation they would buy computers in bulk. The greater the quantity the better the price, good business, no?

Sometimes the evaluating team would be a little bit biased towards one brand over another.

Heck I still am, I would prefer an IBM Laptop over say a Toshiba, or a Compaq Server over a Dell, or even a HP desktop over a Gateway.

Why a different brand for a different type of computer? Well in the case of the Servers I never once saw a Compaq smoke, but I have seen a couple of Dells actually go up in smoke. One was so bad that if I hadn't been close to it I may have died, because the Data center didn't have water fire extinguishers it had Halon gas to suck the oxygen out of the air to stop a fire. I made it to the door just as the Halon went off. Close.

Which brings me to my point about a laptop that hangs on start up. Some times the charging circuit gets stuck on restart, then the computer either just sets at the prompt blinking or it blue screens.

How do you do a "Hard" reset on a laptop, I mean it isn't like a desktop (custom built anyway) that has a reset button.

One way is to disconnect the AC adapter from the laptop, then remove the battery, you could go as far as taking the BIOS backup battery out if it is accessible.

This will clear the charging circuit, then put the battery in first, start the computer. If it starts up then power it down and connect the AC adapter. Do another restart.

If it starts ok then you have cleared the circuit, if it hangs on start again then you will need to change out the power supply because it has failed.

For some reason the evaluating team for the major corporation decided that Toshiba (can't remember the model numbers) would be the best computer when we upgraded from Pentium III to Pentium 4. There were three models they picked, different screen sizes, different drive capacity, and how much ram could be in the laptop.

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That is where I found out that the charging circuit would hang on start sometimes when the AC adapter was connected. Weird. But then I learned something.

Another problem with those Toshibas was the engineering and design was really bad, the power supply (which we had to change hundreds) was in the bottom case and the video hinge was part of the power supply.

This design meant that to change the power supply you had to disassemble whole computer; open the case, take out the drives, motherboard, then remove the video screen from the hinge, finally you were almost ready to pull out the power supply. Well you had a couple dozen screws you had to locate first.

I spent a day in a tech class to become certified on those three Toshibas just to change a power supply. Why did the company take on this work while the computers were under warranty? Because it would be faster for a company tech in the field to do the work than waiting for the poor overworked Toshiba tech to get to all those computers.

Then for the next couple of months I did a Toshiba power supply a day, it would take a day to disassemble then reassemble those laptops - end of hangs on start problems... Maybe.

When I started the www.diy-computer-repair.net web site I wanted to help you by doing reviews on hardware and software, most of the products I own or have helped someone that owns it. I try to do an objective non-biased review of the product. If it is a good product I say so, if it is a bad product I say so. I also rate the customer and support service of the manufacture/publisher. I am not compensated for these reviews, that is the product manufacture does not give me the product or pay me to do the review.

I also use one of the better rating systems for products when I do my research for articles and that is at newegg.com , you find the product you are looking for from their index or search then check the reviews. Newegg does have fair prices but occasionally they are a little higher than other on line suppliers.

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