I ordered a Compaq Presario V3149AU laptop (AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-52, 1GB DD2 667 MHz RAM, 120 GB SATA HDD, Windows XP Media Center Edition) last week. I went to recieve it yesterday. It went through some intial startup processes, but then it stopped at a point. We waited for 20 mins but it did not move. W restarted it but it never came upto BIOS POST screen after that. However, its DVD-RW drive LED kept blinking and it sounded like there's a CD in drive. Drive door won't open so we used a pin and found there's no CD/DVD in it. My vendor sent it back for a replacement but I still want to know why did t happen? I think its BIOS must be corrupted, but then it must not have loaded even once. Somone please tell me what's happening?

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Dollars to donuts you simply had a bad drive that was preventing a boot. If the BIOS sequence looks for A: D: C: in that order to boot and one of the devices is kloogy, then the whole kit and kaboodle will be halted during startup. Could also be a bad RAM card or simply a shot system board OOB.

Did you get a manual with the computer? Specifically one supporting your chip set? Bad boots usually have a specific boot sequence, say 3 short beeps for one problem or one LONG beep for another problem. That, plus any error codes shown on the screen, should give you enough data to do with.

More information for something like this would be really helpful. I can usually remotely diagnose, repair anything provided the proper information is available.

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Compaq, if they still practice the same old configuration, stores BIOS within hard drive sector. There is no physical BIOS chip like most major brands.

This was, perhaps still is, very useful if you have to chage or swap out a hard drive. All necessary information including key BIOS settings are "imaged" by a restore disk and can be implanted to a brand new drive without manual configuration. Servers were very needed something like this in the past that Compaq used it for all their computer line. But since the cheap RAID solutions these days perhaps this idea is no longer served correctly.

Anyway, if your hard drive was indeed dead, you cannot access BIOS with Compaq machines--and this further solidifies a hard drive failure.

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The problem with your laptop is hardware related and the reasons may be following :

• RAM MODULE : If display is not coming then may be the ram module is loose or RAM may be damaged.
• Mother Board Is Damaged : The motherboard may also get damaged and can prevent the whole system from booting
• Processor : May be the processor is burnt causing the system not to boot

Check out your mother Boards manual or the manufacturers website for your model number and note which BIOS is there on your system and then Check the beeps and problem indicated by that beep.

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I'm not too sure about the BIOs and motherboard setups on Compaq's laptops, but I know on desktops you can reset the bios with the CMOS battery on the motherboard. I guess you could try cracking open your laptop and trying to find a BIOs battery. If you can find one you have to remove the battery, let it lose its "charge" then replace the battery and try rebooting the computer. This should reset your bios settings, so anything that may have been misconfigured in your bios would be reset.

Probably a hardware issue, but atleast worth a shot before you start replacing stuff...

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