so now this is happening.

[dira]

This morning in the midst of my standard morning LJ-check, my laptop shut down. Just, went dark and stopped. It wasn't hot, there was no power disruption, and no error message. Now when I press the power button the power light and caps lock/number lock/other thing I can't identify that isn't wifi lights come on, stay on for two or three seconds (long enough for the external hard drive to detect the computer is turned on and start up) and then go out. Nothing else. I thought maybe the screen did the subtle flash from "turned off" to "turned on but showing black" and then back but it's pretty bright in my living room so it's kind of hard to tell.

ETA: Computer is three years and two months old and therefore, naturally, two months out of the longest-available warranty, which I dutifully bought so that this would not happen until right now.

Anybody have any ideas about what this might be and whether it might be fixable and, if fixable, how long it might take and oh god how much it might cost?

/o\

Comments

[mahoni]

We have an HP laptop that did that a couple of months ago. I took it to the Geek Squad at Best Buy, and they said that either some piece of hardware (I *think* they said the motherboard) was going, or we had a virus. It turned out we had several viruses (long story; suffice it to say I was angry but not surprised). I was glad because that fix only (that's an ironic 'only') cost somewhere between $150 - $200, whereas the other would have been MUCH more expensive.

[dira]

I'm pretty sure I had the virus version of this problem two or three laptops back--popped a Norton Antivirus disc into the drive and it started up like a charm, right where it had shut down. Unfortunately I think it's hardware this time. :(