laptop motherboard?

Question

i have this laptop that i need to get the memory off of and on to a portable hardrive.problem is,the laptop wont kick up.itll turn on but nothing will show up on the screen and the activity light only blinks once.i tried hooking it up to an external source via s-video and nothing.im pretty sure its the motherboard but i just want a second opinion

Answer 1

Just pull the Hard Drive and get yourself an external enclosure. That way you will have full access to everything on the Disk. Here is a nice one from newegg:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817145136

Good Luck HTH.

Answer 2

I wouldn't be so quick to assume a motherboard problem. While different laptops boot up differently, the general progression for boots are similar. the blink of an activity light (I assume you refer to the hard drive activity light) indicates that the processor is able to access the drive looking for a boot sector. It could be that it's unable to load the boot sector due to a hard drive problem. If you're experienced in hardware matters, you might try to verify by replacing the hard drive (if one's available - don't run out and by one just to test with). Otherwise, if you're not really into hardware troubleshooting, let a professional have a look at it. You might be able to save some money.

The other answers have merit too. Using an USB connect to another computer may at least let you get your data off the drive if the drive is OK

And I definitely like MOKA's answer below.

.
Regards -

Answer 3

If you dont want to buy an external caddy like mentioned above you can always buy a Laptop IDE Adaptor 2.5" to 3.5".

Its a IDE cable that converts the IDE interface on your laptop hard drive to one that will fit into your PC. So basically you can put your laptop hard drive into your PC then transfer the files over!

The best thing is these are very cheap ₤3 or ₤4. (about $8-$9?).

Heres a link to one on EBay http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Laptop-IDE-Adaptor-Convertor-Cable-2-5-to-3-5-Lead_W0QQitemZ180177507111QQihZ008QQcategoryZ41994QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Answer 4

Buy a hard drive external enclosure (for a 2.5" drive), remove the hard drive from the computer and hook it to another computer via USB (or firewire, depending) and transfer your files.
Good luck with the rest of it.
Try eBay for the board if you want to fix the computer.

Answer 5

MOBO (motherboard) is having issues. It could be a lot of things that are doing it but it appears that it is toast. You can get adapters to hook up a laptop disk drive to a desktop. They are cheap and readily available.