# averatec laptop problems



## debbiefl (May 18, 2006)

OK, here is the situation. My son had his laptop in Iraq, and it has fine talcum podwer sand in it. I bought a couple of cans of air, and cleaned it as much as possible. I pulled the cd player, the battery and the memory and cleaned them. Now for the problem: It won't boot into windows(xp). If left alone, it will go to the Windows splashscreen, and the little green bar will move for about 1\2 hour, then it will reboot. It won't go into safe mode. It loads the drivers for safe mode, then reboots. It won't boot to a cd, for some reason, the hd and cd are disabled in the bios, and WILL NOT allow them to be enabled. HELP!


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## hwm54112 (Oct 10, 2005)

Welcome to TSF, debbiefl

Just to get you started, have you tried clearing bios by removing the main battery and the CMOS battery for a few minutes?

When given the screen for entering safe mode, have you tried Command prompt only?

Did it boot before cleaning?

It may help to specify laptop make and model


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## debbiefl (May 18, 2006)

The laptop is an Averatec 6100. No, it wouldn't boot before cleaning, and yes, I have removed the cmos and power battery to clear the NVRAM. I have also removed everything except the hd, processor, and memory and still won't boot. The options are Normal, Last known good, safe mode, safe with command prompt, safe mode with networking, and it won't boot into any of them. Isn't there a virus that will affect the bios? I am thinking that this may be what the problem is. If I tap F12, it gives me an option to use an administrator safe mode. There, it will load drivers, scan the disk (says it's clean), and then for a SPLITSECOND, I see the blue screen of death with an error on it, but it reboots before I can read what it says. Any ideas? It's too thin to make a doorstop out of.


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## hwm54112 (Oct 10, 2005)

> It won't boot to a cd, for some reason, the hd and cd are disabled in the bios, and WILL NOT allow them to be enabled. HELP!


This is misleading- hd and cd are disabled yet if you are at the windows splash screen you are well past bios’ control and a disabled hard drive seems to be controlling the system, obviously an incorrect message. In light of that, have you tried to boot to CD?

Bios virus- haven’t heard mention of them in a few years and while possible, are extremely rare. Boot sector virus is more likely but that doesn’t help much if you can’t boot to cd- no way to clean either. Bios settings may give a clue there as most manufacturer’s enable boot sector protection by default (if it’s an option).

I suspect a hardware error caused by dust and a more thorough cleaning is in order. Realizing how time consuming, not to mention degree of difficulty, another possibility is to remove the drive and get a drive adapter, slave it to a desktop and check the drive (AV, and drive diagnostics). When you pull the drive, It’s a simple matter to remove the controller board and clean the underside of the board. It will not expose the drive mechanism itself. Bear in mind that a little bit of dust in the memory slot, under the processor or in a peripheral could cause a static discharge or short that would cause windows to hang when loading drivers. Notebook drive adapter

Can you change other settings in bios? You may be able to disable some of the onboard peripherals, of which I see there’s a ton on that model (nice laptop) (could help isolate what needs to be cleaned as well as eliminating the windows driver from being loaded that it seems to be hanging on now.) You may want to call averatec and check on how to reset cmos if you can’t change other bios values. Another possibility would be to force a keyboard error during boot by pressing any key- that could be sufficient to cause bios to be re-write.

Did I see where this model will act as a stand-alone dvd player without loading windows? That could tell you something.

Other than that, maybe a speed reading course to read that blue screen? :sad: 

Post back to see how you're doing


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## debbiefl (May 18, 2006)

Thanks for the research. I really appreciate that! No, it won't boot to a cd, and doesn't have a floppy, so here I am. I have given it to the IT guy at the county school system to see what he can do, and he has an adapter. My son has alot of priceless pics on it, and we'd hate to lose them. Also, he just told me he has alot of porn on it, so he probably picked up a virus downloading that. One last clue that I got yesterday, and just dawned on me today. The IT guy said he set the bios to boot to a hd, even tho it is disabled. I did the same thing and on the right side of the bios screen, it says "items in parenthesis are disabled from this menu". I can change the boot order, but it all still stays in parenthesis. When he said he changed the boot to hd, I got to thinking, it was already like that, because that's how I set it last. So that means it's not holding settings. Maybe something as simple as a cmos battery? It keeps time and date, but maybe that's all. But then I understand what you are saying, that if it goes to the splashscreen, it is trying to boot, and not in the bois. The IT guy is going to use his adapter and hook it to his pc, and run a virus scan on it, and if all else fails, he will copy the iraq pics to a cd for me. I'll let you know. I am forwarding this thread to him, so any more ideas will be appreciated!


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## hwm54112 (Oct 10, 2005)

> items in parenthesis are disabled from this menu


I'm interpreting this differently but then again, I can't see the computer. That's not necessarily saying they are disabled, rather it implies they can be disabled from that menu. The fact that they are in parenthesis is for appearance only and has no significance. Sometimes bios can be extremely unintuitive and easily misunderstood. just food for thought. Keeps us posted on progress

Bill


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## debbiefl (May 18, 2006)

Ok, an update! The hard drive is foobar. It failed a GWSCAN (on a flash drive). IT guy is going to put the hd in the freezer for about an hour to see if it will boot. He swears it works about 25% of the time. Now Just trying to get info and pictures off of it. I'll keep you posted.


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## debbiefl (May 18, 2006)

Ok, well, it will boot to a flash drive. IT guy hooked it up to his pc, and got all the info and pics off of it. Interesting FYI - One of the folders was password protected, and he couldn't open it. It was the one folder we wanted the most. He found a DOS program called "read NTFS" that can be downloaded to a bootable floppy. You can open any NTFS file or folder from DOS with it. Now we're looking for an XP Home cd to try to repair windows. I'll keep ya"ll posted.


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## laboye (Apr 11, 2006)

Wow, thats incredible. The freezing harddrive act actually does often work, but you have to act fast and recover the data quickly, before the parts heat up again. It's one of those cheap data recovery techniques. Good luck with the recovery. As far as the machine goes, I think a peripheral got jammed (jammed like in Space Balls). I would personally buy a new computer, as that problem is likely a tedious job to repair.


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## reggiem (Feb 13, 2008)

Boot Failure, Reboot and Select proper Boot Device or Insert Boot Medai... I have a Averatec 3200 series and I do not have the disk. I have many valuables that must be recovered. does anyone have any suggestions?? 
Boot order:
HDD: IC25N040ATMR04-0
CD/DVD: Slimtype Combo SOSC-2483K
BBS-0: Intel UnDI, PXE 2.0 (build 082)
I need it operational or the files by tomorrow.
thanks


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## WA198273 (Apr 13, 2009)

I am new to this board today. I am having similar problems. When a 6200 Averatec went out-my brother has teenagers- enough said- I coudn't find drivers at Averatec. Now they have them for most models. Trigem.com is where you will find them. I believe they even have earlier models. Last Dec they told me they were going to do that.

The 6200 ended up being the HD with the same symptoms she describes.

Now my brother brought me a Averatec 7100 DOA on arrival. Black Screen of Death. He says the fan went first awhile back. Then it would boot off and on. Today it is black and the power light is on and It has power and the CD spins around but I think he has mulitple problems. It is the black screen of death so if anythng is happening I can't see it and I can't hear it.

Tried Spinrite, tried recovery disks, I probably have a dead video, etc.. Can't hear anything either. Do have power obviously. Have others had the same problems with all the averatec laptops?

This isn't worth going after is it?
:4-dontkno


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## whowelookinfor (Apr 18, 2009)

my averatec 7100 went through all of the same symptoms, just about in the same order. now, i plug in my power supply and the green light on the box comes on until i plug it into the power receptacle on my notebook, then the laptop itself does nothing, but the LED on my power box flashes orange. arghhh! it was my favorite machine, comparing to my apple powerbook G4, and my sony vaio fz140e! (sony vaio is valued much higher than my former favorite!)


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## tlidahl (Aug 17, 2009)

Averatec 7100 All the lights come on but nothing happens. No screen no fan no sound of a spinning hard drive. Now what?


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