Many things come to mind on the laptops - brands I've had with strange quirks:
Twinheads - dead - as in it will never ever hold a charge again - battery
would/will prevent a complete boot
AST - improper shutdown leaving in it a hibernation mode that it can't get
out of
Toshibas that go into standby and won't come back out
Dell - "loose" hard drive or modular bay insert (floppy, cd, battery) not
fully seated that keeps the boot sequence from starting

but like most other computers aside from the strange things that are
particular to a brand follow the same steps as a desktop.

Everything tight? power cable, pop out bays, hard drive, memory, etc
can you boot with a floppy? if yes can you run a scan disk on hard disk?
have you tried the diagnostic disk that came with the laptop? check out
everything
will it boot with a cd?
remove battery and try booting
try the "function" key and F8  to cycle through video modes (if you see
nothing onthe screen perhaps some one was playing around with the modes)
have you tried booting with a 'regular' monitor plugged into the video port
on the back? if yes try fn + F8 to work through modes.
does it have a docking station that you test with?

can you provide details on laptop model, os, etc?


At 08:28 PM 2/18/2004, you wrote:
>
>
>  Hi, I have a laptop (I have it, it actually doesn't belong to me) that won
>t boot up.  When I press the power button to turn it on, the lights blink,
>and it begins whirring, but the monitor does nothing, and the processor
>light doesn't do anything either.  It just sits like this indefinitely.  Any
>ideas?
>
>
>
>Thank you.
>
>
>
>Steven Corbett, Jr.

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