Member Avatar for patelrg

I have a three+ year old Sony VGN-S260 and one day out of the blue it did not start. Some times it will start just fine, but others it will not. The symptoms are odd because the led lights that display battery, wifi, and hard drive are lighting up as though it is on. Yet, the hard drive is not spinning. I attempted to run hardware tests using a bootable cd, but the cd begins spinning after a little while only to stop again. I thought it might be the ram, but I am having a hard time finding new ram for it because it is micro dimm. Any suggestions?

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As described, the VGN-S260 lights status LEDs but the hard drive motor never reliably spins and a boot CD will start then stop. That pattern usually narrows the fault to either a failing HDD (mechanical/spindle issue) or an intermittent power-delivery problem to the drive or its connector on the mainboard — not just RAM. Building on ’s isolation idea, focus first on tests that separate a bad drive from a bad power rail or jack.

  • Check the AC adapter and DC jack: measure the adapter voltage with a multimeter and try a known-good adapter if possible. A loose or cracked DC jack can show lights but fail under the motor load.
  • Do a power-reset: disconnect all power, drain residual charge by pressing the power button 20–30 seconds, then try AC-only boot. This clears stuck power states without repeating component swapping.
  • Test the HDD externally: remove the drive and connect it to a desktop or USB-to-SATA/IDE dock. If it won’t spin or clicks, the drive is likely dead. If it spins and SMART reads OK, the laptop’s drive power/connector or logic board is suspect.
  • Try a bootable USB stick (if the CD stops) to see whether the laptop will boot from another device; success here points back to the internal drive or its cable.

If data matters, image the drive immediately on another machine (use a cloning tool that handles read errors) or hand it to a recovery specialist if the spindle won’t start. For the microDIMM question: borrow a compatible module from a donor unit for testing rather than hunting parts first. If any of the above steps are uncomfortable or you find intermittent power at the jack, consider a local repair shop — board-level fixes can cost more than replacing an older laptop. The same diagnostic path applies to ’s dead Presario: start with adapter/DC-jack and external drive tests before deeper disassembly.

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Member Avatar for guddguy

My Compaq Presario model 2500 won't turn on atall. I tried to boot after removing battery, still it won't turn on.

How can I pinpoint the problem in hardware?

Member Avatar for sgamble

Here are the basic troubleshooting techniques I use to find a "mysterious" problem such as yours.

1. Remove battery and set it aside - try to POST
2. Remove HDD and set it aside - try to POST
3. Remove CDROM and set it aside - try to POST
4. Remove RAM and set it aside - try to POST (PCs can't POST without RAM silly man, duh, listen for a beep from your PC speaker. 99% of motherboards I've worked on give some sort of error beep when no RAM is installed.

Basically what you are doing is isolating all periferals until you find out if one of them is causing the no boot issue. Once you are down to nothing left, you can be sure it's a mobo or proc issue.

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