A laptop that doesn't want to start

When Paul Wright switches on his laptop, it can wait for up to an hour before it starts. Is it the motherboard? If not, can we find the fault?

Save for later

I have a two-year-old HP laptop. When I switch it on, it does nothing for up to an hour then it suddenly springs into action and fires up. The local "computer chaps" say it is the motherboard. I'm not convinced, and it is still working after six months of the same. Loose connections? I have shaken it. Dust and muck? I have used a hairdryer, to no avail. Do you have any thoughts – or is it just the motherboard!
Paul Wright
Intermittent faults are very hard to diagnose, and it would be worth your while searching for [laptop "intermittent start" OR "intermittent boot"] and the model number of your laptop. If you happen to have an HP dv6000, some versions seem to have been a bit of a nightmare, judging by the long discussion in HP's own forum at HP dv6000 laptop start-up problems.
PCs are supposed to beep to indicate any problems following a POST or "power-on self test", where one short beep means everything is OK.
The beeps and things like flashing cursors usually tell you where to start looking for the fault. Most operating systems also keep logs that can indicate problems. If you are running Microsoft Windows XP, read support document Q308427: How to view and manage event logs in Event Viewer in Windows XP. Vista and Windows 7 have much-improved versions. With no hardware or software indicators to go on, we're reduced to experiment and guesswork.
In this case, it could be the motherboard, a loose connection, the hard drive failing, the power supply, or something attached to the computer, such as an external hard drive. (Unplug everything you've plugged in.) I think it's more likely to be a hardware than a software problem, but it could be a bad video driver. It might even be malware such as a boot-sector virus, and it's never a bad idea to check for those.
The hard drive would be my biggest worry. If it is failing to start for anything from a few minutes to an hour, then one day it could fail to start at all. Make sure all your data files are backed up. Also, keep a USB thumbdrive plugged in while you're working, so you can quickly back up the most recent files.

Advertisement

Several small applications will check the health of your hard drive and predict when it will eventually fail. Run Pantera Soft's free HDD Health and see what it says. Also, see if you can hear whether the hard drive spins up when you turn the power on, and whether the laptop boots only after the hard drive kicks in. With a desktop PC, one idea is to lift the lid and hold the drive lightly, because your fingers will feel the disk start to spin. You might be able to feel it through the laptop case.
You can also try changing the boot order in your laptop's BIOS set-up chip so that it tries the optical drive before the hard drive. If your laptop will boot immediately from your Windows DVD, or a Linux Live CD, that suggests a hard drive problem.
With a laptop, there is no good way to isolate hangs that might be caused by loose connections. On a desktop, it's relatively easy to check that all the internal plugs and wires are correctly seated and that no expansion cards are slightly loose. It's harder to get to connectors on a laptop, but reseat any that are easily accessible.
Also, while waiting for the laptop to start, try pressing down gently on the keyboard and other parts of the case. Sometimes a slight movement will get things going, perhaps because there's a loose connection or because the motherboard has what we used to call (in the days when every home had a soldering iron) a "dry joint". However, if you can't recognise a dry joint on a motherboard – and I couldn't – then you have no chance of fixing it yourself. See if varying the power supply makes a difference. Try starting your laptop with the battery removed and the mains adaptor plugged in. Also, if possible, try it with a different mains adaptor.
There are a couple of things that you can do to find possible software faults. First, assuming your Windows installation is up to date, run a few searches to see if you can find more recent drivers, particularly video drivers. Guru3D's Driver Sweeper can help you clean out old drivers.

Advertisement

Second, run a check for rootkits and boot sector viruses. Microsoft's Windows Sysinternals has a free RootkitRevealer, but Sophos Anti-Rootkit and Kaspersky's TDSS Killer are worth a go. Finally, run Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Free from your desktop, selecting the Quick Scan option.
Knowing you have a secure backup, you could also try a "factory restore". To do this, reboot, your laptop and press F10 a few times when the HP logo appears. When you see the recovery screen, choose Next and then Yes to perform a non-destructive recovery. If that doesn't solve the problem, you could try choosing Advanced and then Yes to perform a destructive recovery. You will have to reinstall your software (including a lot of Windows updates!) afterwards, but a full reset can clear out a lot of junk and solve many niggling problems.
Alternatively, if your system is running Windows XP or Vista, then you could upgrade to Windows 7, preferably the 64-bit version. This provides much better monitoring (start typing "performance monitor"), which helps when things go wrong.
If all else fails, take your laptop to a local computer repair shop, since these have tools that can more easily identify faults. They should give you an estimate of the cost of attempting to repair it, though success is not guaranteed. It would be a shame to give up on a two-year-old machine that would probably run Windows 7 or Windows 8 for several more years. However, a quick look at ebay.co.uk should give you a good idea of the second-hand value of your PC, and there's a limit to how much it's worth spending to fix it.