Tech guy broke my laptop

Angelstorm9x3

I have an old Compaq Armada 1750 laptop. It has an Intel Pentium II, 128 mb of ram, a 3 gb hard drive, and a broken hinge.
At one time, I wanted to make it into a computer that could support a modern os, so I gave it to the schools' tech guy to see if he could find a spare stick of ram for it. He returned it and said that he wasn't even going to try to work with something that old.
After I got it back, I tried to turn it on and after the boot logo was greeted by a flashing screen. It kept flashing white for a few minutes, then it said that there wasn't a bootable os. I put in the reinstall cd and it said the same thing.
Not to mention, the left hinge is now completely broken.
Does anybody have a clue what I could do here?

wingzeroismine

Which OS boot logo is it? If it was 95/98 then it was pretty common for formatted drives to still flash their boot logo, I can't remember exactly what caused it, but it could have been the MBR remaining.

From any bootable media can you confirm that C: does contain data and the filesystem is free from errors?

You could also try typing fdisk /mbr for the minor chance thats all it needs.

But before doing anything, tell us what OS it last had and what OS these "reinstall cd"s contain.

Angelstorm9x3

The boot logo doesn't show up, just the Compaq logo. After the POST the screen starts flashing white (so fast you can barely see it). This goes on for a few minutes, then it says Non-System disc or Disc error, Replace disc and press any key when ready. I wait a bit, then the screen goes gray. This happens with any boot media.

The last OS was Windows 95. The reinstall cds contain Windows 95 and the Compaq applications (for stuff like Programmable Keys, and all of the custom drivers.)

I just booted it and it smells like dust, so I'm probably going to have to start by cleaning it.

wingzeroismine

If it happens with any boot media then I'd make sure its bios settings are correct.

Angelstorm9x3

The little battery on the motherboard is completely dead, so when I take out the main battery it resets all the BIOS stuff. Right now it's at factory defaults and won't boot.

wingzeroismine

Ah ok, wonder if its soldered onto the board, many at that time were, could be replaced but a challenge.

I suppose we should be more concerned with the flashing white screen for a few minutes, really shouldn't be any reason for such behavior. Just to be clear, its the entire screen and not a cursor or anything?

It then goes to the non-system disk screen but the image appears perfectly stable and normal?

And later it goes gray... at that point it stays gray until it is powered off?

Assuming this strange behavior is at least ignorable and not a sign of anything else failing perhaps you should see about booting with the hard drive removed, in case its trying to access that and ignoring other media.

TCPMeta

Tech guy might of dropped it.

Crack it open, clean it, replace the CMOS battery and put it back together. After all the BIOS also controls the video so a wiped CMOS might have effected the video.

wingzeroismine

TCPMeta wrote:

After all the BIOS also controls the video so a wiped CMOS might have effected the video.

That sounds somewhat farfetched....
Even with a dead cmos battery if he left the power cord and main battery (if it even works anymore) installed the cmos values wouldn't get wiped a second time until power was removed, so the date/time and other variables should be settable and retained until power is removed again.

TCPMeta

You would be surprised with some systems. some power supplies shut down for a split second on reboots so it can clear the memory.

Angelstorm9x3

The battery is a little thing that's shrink-wrapped and soldered onto some leads that connect it to the motherboard. It can be removed.

Yes, the entire screen flashes, not just a cursor or anything. Then it stabilizes and says that about a non-system disc. I've tried removing the hard drive, but no luck.

The Armada, by the way, is one of those "fancy" laptops with a gui for the bios. The boot order settings are under a thing called MultiBoot.

wingzeroismine

Angelstorm9x3 wrote:

The battery is a little thing that's shrink-wrapped and soldered onto some leads that connect it to the motherboard. It can be removed.

Is that a typo? I just want to double check.
Does it look something like this?

If it is in fact removable then yeah I suppose it shouldn't hurt to spend a couple bucks and get a replacement one.
If you live in the US and PM me your mailing address I could possibly even get one shipped to you for free.... the connector and cable length look about identical to the yellow ones used in IBM/Lenovo laptops.

DeepFriedCookies

It sounds like a bad hard drive. The thing flashing across the screen sounds like a BIOS message basically amounting to "drive not found". The tech guy might HAVE dropped it, and fucked up the ancient hard disk.

Kirk

DeepFriedCookies wrote:

It sounds like a bad hard drive. The thing flashing across the screen sounds like a BIOS message basically amounting to "drive not found". The tech guy might HAVE dropped it, and fucked up the ancient hard disk.

Agreed, once a laptop with a magnetic disk is dropped, the chances of subsequent failure (even if it's a few weeks later) goes through the roof.

Angelstorm9x3 wrote:

Not to mention, the left hinge is now completely broken.

Angelstorm9x3

wingzeroismine wrote:

Angelstorm9x3 wrote:

The battery is a little thing that's shrink-wrapped and soldered onto some leads that connect it to the motherboard. It can be removed.

Is that a typo? I just want to double check.
Does it look something like this?

No, it's not a typo, and yes, it looks a lot like that.

DeepFriedCookies wrote:

It sounds like a bad hard drive. The thing flashing across the screen sounds like a BIOS message basically amounting to "drive not found". The tech guy might HAVE dropped it, and fucked up the ancient hard disk.

Kirk wrote:

DeepFriedCookies wrote:

It sounds like a bad hard drive. The thing flashing across the screen sounds like a BIOS message basically amounting to "drive not found". The tech guy might HAVE dropped it, and fucked up the ancient hard disk.

Agreed, once a laptop with a magnetic disk is dropped, the chances of subsequent failure (even if it's a few weeks later) goes through the roof.

If any of you can open .webm files, or have chrome or whatever, this is a video of what actually happens.

TCPMeta

Pull out the hard drive, boot the system with a CD or USB jump drive. If it still doesn't boot then I would say its trashed.

wingzeroismine

I thought I had asked you to try booting from your cd with the drive removed, perhaps it was a different thread...

Thanks for the video but couldn't really see the flashing due to the lighting / reflection / pixelation, but it clearly seems to just be sitting there rather dumb like instead of displaying anything meaningful, though I wish the top of the screen weren't cropped out of the video....

Trying to pop in a new cmos battery to see if the behavior changes any is the only real option, you can't get it to boot anything you can't diagnose it any further than that. Since it should be the same generic battery many other laptops use try snatching one from another machine at least temporarily to test it.

Kirk

Angelstorm9x3 wrote:

I have an old Compaq Armada 1750 laptop. It has an Intel Pentium II, 128 mb of ram, a 3 gb hard drive, and a broken hinge.

TCPMeta wrote:

Pull out the hard drive, boot the system with a CD or USB jump drive.

It's worth noting that a Pentium II system probably doesn't have the ability to boot to a USB flash drive. I don't think that was introduced as a typical BIOS feature until the Windows XP era.

TCPMeta

Didn't know it was that old. Didn't even know laptops even had a pentium II option, thought only celeron, AMD and Winchip were the only options then.

BlueSun

TCPMeta wrote:

Didn't know it was that old. Didn't even know laptops even had a pentium II option, thought only celeron, AMD and Winchip were the only options then.

Seems an odd assumption to make.

My first laptop was a Pentium II 300 Mhz.

Kirk

TCPMeta wrote:

Didn't know it was that old. Didn't even know laptops even had a pentium II option, thought only celeron, AMD and Winchip were the only options then.

Man, there were laptops with 486 processors that ran Windows 3.1!

TCPMeta

I know there were laptops with 486 hell there were even a few 286 laptops back then. I just never seen a Pentium II laptop before.

BOD

TCPMeta wrote:

I just never seen a Pentium II laptop before.

Ah yes, the great 1997-1999 laptop famine. I remember it well.

Angelstorm9x3

Now that I have finally returned from the land of no internet, I got the laptop fixed. I'm not sure what happened, but it booted normally and I reinstalled the OS. Then I reinstalled the BIOS.