Lost Mother Board?

[colituse]

My Notebook: Lenovo 3000 N100
OS: Windows XP
Type: 0689-A6U
Original description: T5500(1.66GHz), 1GB RAM, 80GB 5400rpm HD, 14.1in 1280x800 LCD, Intel 950, CDRW/DVDRW, Intel 802.11abg wireless, Bluetooth/Modem, 10/100 Ethernet, IEEE 1394, Fingerprint reader, 6c Li-Ion batt, WinXP Pro


Suspected Problem: I think my mother board is bad.

What's happens:
I start the computer and the first thing to appear is the Lenovo screen that says intel at the top right hand of the screen.

Then the next screen to pop up is the
"NTLDR is missing
Press Ctrl+Alt+Delete to restart"

So I made a NTLDR boot CD for XP, and I set my BIOS to boot from the CD.I put the CD in and the screen was blank, you can hear the CD starts to run. It continues for a while and then the same message is displayed.

"NTLDR is missing
Press Ctrl+Alt+Delete to restart"

So I restart the computer and then pressed the Lenovo Care button, it brings up a screen that say ThinkVantage Technologies and has a loading bar underneath it. The loading bar finishes and the message changes into Please Wait, while still displaying the loading bar. The computer will now stay there with that message “Please Wait” indefinitely.

The hard drive is still working because I put it into a mini external drive that I had, and connected to a different computer to save all my files. So the next thing I tried was, I have a rescue and recovery CD for my computer and I placed it into the CD drive. Started the computer and you hear the CD spinning for a minute with a blank screen and it stops spinning and the “NTLDR is missing” message pops up again.

Then I downloaded a copy of ubuntu Linux 9.10, I placed it into the laptop and started it. The options came up for how to run ubuntu, I choose to run ubuntu without changes to any files on my computer. It then displayed a blinking underscore at the top left hand side of my screen; it stayed this way indifinitly. My philosophy with this was if the computer ran ubuntu live then my hard drive or hard drive partition is bad. If it didn't then it must be my mother board or some other hardware problem. I also switched out my ram to see if this might be the problem with no success. There are no beep codes when I turn the machine on ether.

So should I replace my motherboard? I'm not sure how to tell if a processor has gone bad. Also I haven't found anyone one with the same problem online, and I have taken the laptop to a repair shop. They said they couldn't figure out what was wrong with it.

 

[Captain Pooka]

I'm tired. Just try slaping in the XP CD, or 7.. whatever... and when it says "reinstall windows" do it. It will load it's stuff, then it will ask you again sonething, click repair.

I say this because it asks you to repair right when you pop in the CD, and that one is stupid.. only if you want to do things manually.

Sorry, I forgot what most of your post said. I'll look at it again tomorrow and I'm sure other people will.

Look here as well.

http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000465.htm

Something I don't know if that guide says, but you can press teh frist repair off of the CD and do boot.ini /rebuild I think that's what it was. Just type in help and it will feed you all you need to know

Night! And welcome to the forums!

-Q

 

[colituse]

Thank you and I will try this but I will have to locate a winXP CD first. I only have the Lenovo care button and a recovery and repair disk.

The reason why I thought that the XP CD wouldn't work is because, of the recovery CD and button failing, and also I made a NTLDR boot CD that didn't work. Plus ubuntu live should have ran off my CD rom if there were no hardware issues. So I don't think that it was my hard drive or the data on it.

But I could be totally wrong; I will defiantly try your solution and get back to you.

Thanks

 

[Jesusfrk611]

If the motherboard was bad, all you'd get was lights on and fans spinning. No video on screen and nothing responding. Just need to repair the OS as Pooka said.

As far as the Lenovo Care button goes, it's really not important and it probably runs a program off the hard drive that may have gotten deleted or something.

 

[J03]

Yeah, I doubt that it's caused by a bad motherboard. Bad RAM, perhaps. But not a bad motherboard.

 

[colituse]

Alright so there is only one partition and I got a XP pro CD and started the computer. It ran the bios setup for windows (blue screen with white txt), and then it gave me the option to format my drive. It finished formatting, and then at the bottom left hand side of the screen it said “starting windows”. It froze on this screen (still in the bios setup) before starting windows.

So since this didn't work, I took a hard drive out of a laptop running vista to see if it would boot on the broken laptop. Turned the computer on and the vista loading screen started, it then froze on this screen before starting windows.

no luck

I purchased a new hard drive and placed into my laptop. Then I ran the XP install disk and it still froze when it went to start windows.