Laptops or notebook computers are a fantastic way to do every day computing, and a great way to do things on the go.

You can almost do just about everything on a laptop that you can do on a desktop computer. Most computer gamers and video editors will us e a desktop computer, but they can even do these hardware intensive activities on a laptop as well.

The only big difference between a desktop computer and laptop is a desktop PC is easier and cheaper to upgrade.

Also, when something goes wrong, having the ability to change parts in a desktop helps diagnose what is wrong, which you cant do in a laptop.

Which brings us to this post on why a laptop could not be starting and different things to try and fix the problem.

Reasons Why Laptops Don’t Turn On

There can be many reasons a laptop will not turn on. Most of the time it is hardware related, but there are some software issues which can contribute.

Also we need to define what turn on really means.

For the sake of this post will say, turn on properly means can not boot into Windows – rather than just no power.

Powers Surge

I don’t know exactly why, but we see more laptops damaged by power than we do desktop computers.

Maybe there are more laptops out there now, or maybe the power supply unit’s (PSU’s) in desktop PC’s are better and protect the computer better. Either way, laptop and notebook computers are much more susceptible to power damage than desktops.

This includes damage to the motherboard, hard drive, Power Supply unit and Processor.

Heat Damage

Living ion North Queensland and it is already very hot. Computers do a lot of things very quickly and require lots of power which results in heat off of the components.

In a laptop where all the hardware is jammed in together, that heat can built up and doing physical damage to the main components and result in your computer not turning on properly or being able to boot correctly.

Bad Power Adapter

You might have notice your laptop power cable and adapter is much different than a desktop computer.

There is a little but more too them and they are sensitive to the elements including being dropped and moved around a lot.

They like any other component in the computer fail also and when they do you might not be able to turn the computer on. Or if you can turn the computer on, you might only be able to run it as long as there is change left in the battery.

Hard Drive Failure

Hard drives are very very sensitive. They do not like to be bumped or moved around lot. It doesn’t take much for them to fail including heat and sudden movements.

Unfortunately laptop computers get moved around a lot and that movement, specially in a bag when someone is riding a bike or moving or jogging can cause the hard drive to fail and you might not be able to boot your laptop up,and you might loose all your data as well.

Virus and Software Issues

Although this is not specific to laptops, like a desktop computer, bad software, corrupt operating system on computer malware including viruses and spyware can stop your laptop booting up or not running properly.

If you have a software issue, your computer will still power up, unless it is to do with the motherboard.

However, you might have problems booting into Windows, or not be able to do anything once you log in.

Things To Try To Start Your Laptop

Have you backed up?

First before doing anything, make sure you have a back up of the data on your computer.

If you do not, do not do anything. It is very easy to loose everything. If you haven’t backed up there are way to recover your data before proceeding which I will leave for another post or you can call us on 0402 807 890.

Power Recycle

Although your laptop might not be plugged into a power source and you might have already pulled the battery out, it could still have electricity in it.

You could try powering it up while it is not plugged in, or leave it for a while without any power and hope that it drains.

This will allow it to do a clean reboot and clear all the motherboard, memory and other components of electricity to do a clean restart.

Disconnect Devices

If you have another devices connected to the laptop, disconnect them.

A faulty device or add-on which might be feeding electricity or signals back into the laptop could be stopping it from turning on.

Devices like a mouse (both wired and wireless), an external hard drive or even a printer could be stopping your laptop from booting up or not starting correctly.

Offline Virus Scan

Sometimes your computer hardware might be starting up but there is a software problem such as a computer virus.

If you are unable to boot properly into Windows because of a virus, it will be almost impossible to scan it for viruses.

The best way to handle this is to make a USB boot dick with an antivirus problem and boot from the USB instead of the internal hard rive in the computer and run an offline antivirus scan.

Many antivirus programs come with their own offline scanner and you are also able to download some very good free ones from the internet.

Make sure you have an USB thumb drive with at least 8GB of free storage space and save the data from the USB drive somewhere first as you will most likely need to format and wipe the USB drive first.

Corrupt Damaged Operating System

Your Operating System, whether it be Microsoft Windows, Apple OSX or one of the Linux distribution can become damaged and corrupt quite easily.

Whether some form of physical failure or bad software has caused the problem, there is usually some sort of safe mode recovery option depending on the type of system you have.

These processes can help you recover the state of your operating system before there was damage and can also aid in the recovery of the data on the drive.

Be careful when performing recovery options and make sure you know the difference between reset, refresh and reboot as they are very different and do different things.

Reset for example will wipe your whole computer including your personal data, pictures, music and documents etc.

Call Townsville Nerds

Some of the above suggestions can be very involved and can get quite complicated.

You don’t want to risk loosing your data, specially if you do not back up. That’s why Townsville Nerds offer a 100% free diagnosis and quote.

We can look at you laptop which is not stating properly free of charge and then give you a quote which you are under no obligation to accept.

If you do not accept our quote, the diagnosis is still free!