Laptop access...

I finally have my laptop working.  When I got back from Colorado I went to open my laptop so I could show everyone my pictures, but it was dead.  I mean, totally DEAD!  It is a very old laptop and it has been a while since I last opened it; if I had to guess, it's probably been close to a year... 

Anyway, I was able to get it to turn on after a couple hours of being plugged in and I went onto the Compaq/HP Webstie and downloaded a couple of diagnostic applications.  I thought it might be the CMOS battery that went dead and I was right.  Well... It is an old laptop!  I figured I could fix it; I have a certification as a computer technician with network support and my brother is a geek; I wasn't about to pay someone else to fix it.  So I went to my local computer store to find a CR1220 CMOS battery.  The problem was, is that this battery is a small battery and no one knew where I could get one... Great... This might not be so easy afterall.

So... I got back on-line and found the battery for $0.99; with s&h it ended up about $2.50; I don't think I could have gotten a better deal.  I also found a Compaq Service Manual for service technicians - what a deal!  I received the battery and started to work.  That, as it usually is when I do things, it wasn't all that easy.

I've been inside a lot of PCs, but I've never been inside a laptop; everything is so small... and my hands are so big... But I got the new battery in and everything back together without any extra parts of screws!  I start the box  the screen flashed, "No Operating System Found"  ARRGHH!!!  I put a boot disk into the floppy disk drive and restarted... The floppy disk was recognized and started... But I had no recognized hard drive...

Now, what?  I put another diagnostic disk in... I accessed the BIOS... Everything checked out, all drives are accounted for and in the right boot sequence... But nothing works... So I started taking things apart, again.  One by one take it apart, put it back together, restart... Until I finally found the right thing...  How simple... It was the hard drive cable...

It's only taken me a month to fix my laptop!  But I have a functioning laptop with upgraded software, it's working great, I have a bunch of stupid games on it, and I can show my skiing video to all my friends.