I fear I just broke laptop hard drive :(

[marzipanni]

My son got this ASUS laptop on Freecycle when he was in high school, and replaced the screen, which had cracked when the owner backed over it in their garage! He has since gone off to college with a new laptop, and I use the ASUS sometimes.

I was using it and got up and started walking, not realizing the the power cord was around my ankle. It was resting on a bed and fell 2.5' onto hardwood floor in opened position, landing on left side with power plug and wireless mouse dongle plugged in. The screen went to Spotify (which my son had on the computer and sometimes pops up when starting the computer) but when I tried to click it off I saw that the cursor was frozen. I checked the dongle, and turned off the computer; now it won't turn on. Do you think the hard drive was damaged from being jarred?

[Renew Deal]

1. If it is a magnetic (spinning) HDD it may be damaged.

There may also be one or more dislodged or damaged components.

[Aerows]

9. Laptops today

have HDD with an impact sensor and disengage the head from the platter when triggered.

You have to reset them, though, by unplugging them from power and the battery to allow the sensor to realign.

It's an "imminent impact" type sensor that recognizes that the device flipped over or radically changed position.

Like a phone that changes screen orientation due to how you are holding it.

EDIT: Toshiba drives are best at this, and I don't work for Toshiba, but they kick ass at imminent impact technology.

[gvstn]

2. Are you seeing the Asus screen?

Even with a bad HDD you should see the ASUS screen. If you don't see the Asus screen try removing any USB devices including wireless dongle and see if it will get to the ASUS screen.

[marzipanni]

3. No, the little blue "on" light in the front doesn't even light up.

Nothing is plugged in, and it doesn't start with or without the power cord (the battery should still be well charged)

[gvstn]

4. That doesn't sound good.

It does however seem odd that it was still powered on after the fall but now doesn't power on.

I think I would remove the battery (electric still unplugged) press and hold the power button for 30 seconds. Then connect only electric and see if it will start.

If no start then try with battery only and then battery and electric. I'm not sure where to go from there if you are still getting absolutely no response. Post the model number of the laptop from the white tag on the bottom just in case a damaged HDD in that particular model might be capable of keeping it from even powering on but that would be almost impossible although a quick google search might bring up something of interest.

[marzipanni]

6. Coooool fix! Thank You So Very Much, gvstn!!!

I followed your instructions, held the power button down for 30 secs., plugged in the cord, and YAAAAY! the computer sprang to life!
So happy to have it back because my old mac desktop is not letting me see some of the more modern things, like some videos, and
the browsers can't be updated.

[gvstn]

10. Glad it helped!

A tiny bit of explanation--your laptop has a small coin shaped battery attached to the motherboard that keeps a copy of the BIOS/basic startup instructions which tell it how to power on and locate the HDD and other devices and keeps track of the current time while the laptop is turned off (this tiny battery lasts 5 years or so because keeping track of this information is not very power intensive). If this copy of the instructions gets corrupted the laptop doesn't even know how to look for the HDD or anything else. Removing all power sources (main battery and electric) and then holding in the power button for about 30 seconds (which interrupts the power from the coin shaped battery (RTC/CMOS battery) deletes this copy of the instructions and forces the laptop to read the default instructions off of a read-only chip on the motherboard the next time it starts up. Lots of times this "refreshed" set of instructions helps in laptops.

One thought is that although the HDD doesn't seem to have been effected you might want to run a chkdsk on the Windows filesystem because of the abrupt shutdown. This can be done by right clicking My Computer and selecting Properties and then clicking on the Tools tab and under that menu under Error Checking select Check Now. Then just leave the first box ticked and hit Start button. It will ask to schedule for next Startup so say Yes. Next time you restart the machine it will take about ten minutes to check for errors in Windows system files. Then it will go back into Windows. Doesn't have to be done if aren't having any problems but I thought I would mention it if you have any problems because of the rather abrupt shutdown.

[Aerows]

5. Do this

Unplug it, and remove the battery. Let it rest for a few minutes. Modern laptops have an anti-impact system on the hard drives and they need to be reset on a hard impact.

Let it sit then plug everything back in, and let us know how it goes. Take out the battery, though, too. It needs to rest without power to reset.

[marzipanni]

7. Thanks, Aerows! With your advice and gvstn's I got it up and running again!

The computer seems none the worse for its second injury (the first being run over )

[Aerows]

8. Glad I could help!

It always pleases me when simple tricks that I know work .

[blackcrowflies]

11. I hope you're doing backups regularly.

Glad the machine was resurrected