Put to sleep while in safe mode, now won't wake up (Vista)

Carsinian Thau

Pretty much exactly as the title says.

EMachines D620 running Windows Vista Home Basic. Was booted into safe mode and then later put to sleep.

Now refuses to turn back on. Despite even a hard reset by taking out the battery and leaving it unplugged for a while etc.

Anyone got any suggestions?

ED E

"Sleeping" is a software function, if its not responding at all then you're looking a hardware issue. Something went kaput while it was in standby. Where was it left?

Do you get any kind of response from it when you try to boot? If not then removing the cmos battery would be the first thing I'd try. That and testing the DC supply, they commonly go and if the charge went meantime it would appear completely dead.

Carsinian Thau

Cheers for the explanation.

The only response is that the battery light comes on when the charger is plugged in but nothing lights up at all when the power button is pushed.

We were attempting to remove a virus at the time (hence the safe mode) as we kind of want it working for Monday. I'm going to guess that if this is hardware (weird timing though so that did throw us tbh) that that isn't going to happen....

ED E

Things to try:
Remove Battery, Press and hold power for 5 secs, wait, do so again, then reinsert battery and attempt boot.

Attempt to power up with just the AC supply, no battery.

Investigate the power button, mechanical switches can fail, maybe add a little extra pressure/tilt/whatever, just dont smash the thing.


Unfortunately, despite in reality being Acer, all the emachines I've seen are pretty low quality laptops. If its in warranty, bring it back. If not, pop the keyboard and remove and replace the cmos battery. If after all this no go, then you've got a serious motherboard issue and need to start considering replacement.

Carsinian Thau

Lethal_Bullet wrote: »

Things to try:
Remove Battery, Press and hold power for 5 secs, wait, do so again, then reinsert battery and attempt boot.

Attempt to power up with just the AC supply, no battery.

Investigate the power button, mechanical switches can fail, maybe add a little extra pressure/tilt/whatever, just dont smash the thing.

Tried all of those with no joy. Might try to play with the button a bit more though.

Lethal_Bullet wrote: »

Unfortunately, despite in reality being Acer, all the emachines I've seen are pretty low quality laptops. If its in warranty, bring it back. If not, pop the keyboard and remove and replace the cmos battery. If after all this no go, then you've got a serious motherboard issue and need to start considering replacement.

Have to agree on the quality thing, the damn display is completely falling apart despite being young and not badly handled.

Wouldn't really be comfortable replacing the CMOS battery, I don't like opening laptops that I don't personally own.

So I think I'll have to advise either looking at repair or replacement.


Probably the most important issue is whether the hard drive contents are ok are not. I am presuming that they are because if that was the issue, you'd get a response from the computer but not be able to load windows, with the BIOS loading ok? (at least, that's what I think, I do hope I'm right).

Thanks for all this help, btw.

ED E

To kill the HDD at the same time as the rest of the machine there'd have to be a really bad surge or short, its v unlikely its damaged at all. Just pop it in another laptop and see, very simple to do.


Personally, before ever going near a repair shop I'd image(make a complete copy) of the drive. You have some recovery if they mess with your hardware, but if some idiot formats your drive you're screwed.