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"Why isn't this laptop booting up?"

Bought a laptop off eBay... damn thing was reported to be working but isn't.

When I power on I get a red screen, shortly after which the laptop powers off again.

If I disconnect the screen entirely I fare slightly better, and I can hear the beep as the memory is checked, and see and hear the disk drive followed by the hard drive being accessed to boot up.

With the screen connected though... just goes red and powers off a few seconds later. No hdd access, other sounds or anything.

Anyone know what's going on?

(PS: I am not interested in being told to report to ebay, argue with the seller or anythign like that. I just want to know what's wrong with the laptop.)

Lets just hope it is not the Screen that is at fault as you are looking at anything from £250 - £450 brand new for the screen (depending on size and type)

Colin

I would get in touch with Pakard Bell and see if you can get spare parts from them: http://support.packardbell.com/uk/contactus/

Maybe see if the Seller wants to chip in on the cost.

Yup, that's the one

Is it one of these, (an Easy Note +):

http://support.packardbell.com/uk/mypc/ (SPACE) index.php?PibItemNr=platform_c2plusb

One of the Packard Bell EasyNote series.... and quite an old one at that.

Spec is:
400MHz Celeron processor
64MB ram
6GB hdd
13.3 screen
Has USB port, IR port, CD rom, disk drive, etc.

What make is it? Some makes have downloadable programs which tell you which model you have.

Bought from an individual. They don't know the model number, and nor can I see any way of finding it out...

You are right it could be the screen, cable or inverter board, Fortunatly the way i test them at work is to get another notebook and use the stuff from that but you may not have this option, Getting a screen will probably cost you more than buying the same spec laptop off of ebay again, Which laptop is it and did you buy it from a company or an individual?

Cheers
Colin

Hooked up the laptop to my CRT monitor and it boots fine, so there's no problem with the graphics card.

My thoughts are that this leaves one of three things buggered:

The invertor.
The screen itself.
The screen cable.

At one point I did briefly get the screen to work just long enough to come up with 'colour test' or something like that, before powering off again. Additionally, a couple of times early on it booted to the red screen and then did nothing, rather than power off completely.

Any ideas how I can tell which of the three components above (or others if I've missed some) is screwed?

I don't know if you can buy laptop screens on their own, but if you can thats what you want, that or the GFx card is buggered, but then I dout the HD would read..