Reboot loop - Lenovo Ideapad/Windows 7

Vorsprung

Laptop crashed, restarted by holding down power button and on restarting, laptop continuously resets at the point when the Lenovo logo comes up on the screen.

It's a 3 year old laptop but haven't had any problems with it before. Running avast and not aware of any virus warning lately.

Any ideas? Tried to go into safe mode but resets before you have a chance.

Thanks in advance

Alanstrainor

I have a couple of ideas to try.

Can you remove the battery on this laptop? If so, remove and boot with just the power jack installed and see if there is any change.

My second thought is to do with the RAM in this system, perhaps one of the sticks has become corrupt. This may be difficult to test, but if it is a system that has two DIMMs (or sticks of RAM), you can remove one, attempt to boot, and replace and remove the other and try again if that fails.

I presume there are no beeps, or any other indicators of a problem at the moment?

Vorsprung

Thanks for your suggestions Alan.

Opened it up, no change on disconnecting battery and looks like there's only one stick of RAM.

Desperately hoping it's not a corrupted hard drive, would that potentially cause the problem it's experiencing?

Alanstrainor

Vorsprung wrote: »

Thanks for your suggestions Alan.

Opened it up, no change on disconnecting battery and looks like there's only one stick of RAM.

Desperately hoping it's not a corrupted hard drive, would that potentially cause the problem it's experiencing?

No, I would expect a failed hard drive to show different symptoms. I would still have to wonder if it is the RAM however, I would still try and check that. Perhaps remove the single stick and attempt to boot. Obviously it wont boot correctly, but it should beep or give separate errors.

(be careful to ground yourself before opening and holding the RAM.)

Vorsprung

I did try that alright last night, it turned on but the screen remained black. No beeps or sounds either way.

Alanstrainor

What exact model is this? Provide links if you can...

Vorsprung

It's a Lenovo Ideapad u310

http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/ideapad/u-series/u310/

Vorsprung

Had another look at it,managed to capture the message that comes up before it resets (appears for a split second after the Lenovo logo), don't know if it sheds any light on the origin?

yoyo

Looks like the hard disk may be failing, try running a scandisk within Windows. Does it report any errors? From reading the above it looks like the hard disk has failed/is failing

Nick

Vorsprung

yoyo wrote: »

Looks like the hard disk may be failing, try running a scandisk within Windows. Does it report any errors? From reading the above it looks like the hard disk has failed/is failing

Nick

Windows doesn't load, it's literally a loop between the usual Lenovo logo screen when it turns on initially, then what I attached pops up for a split second, then all black and back to Lenovo logo and repeat. Can't get into safe mode either despite the prompt popping up.

riclad

You can get acess to drive c,
by booting from a live cd. eg linux mint 7, iso file is 650meg 32bit version.
Back up any important files, to a usb drive.
it fits on 1 cdr disc.
linux can see any files on a hardrive from a windows laptop.
google make a linux cd livecd .
You,ll have to boot from cd .
press del or f5 , or f12 to do this .to acess boot menu.
or it may just boot from cdr cd anyway.

ED E

Vorsprung wrote: »

Windows doesn't load, it's literally a loop between the usual Lenovo logo screen when it turns on initially, then what I attached pops up for a split second, then all black and back to Lenovo logo and repeat. Can't get into safe mode either despite the prompt popping up.

Grab a windows disk and boot from that, use it to do a system repair.

Chances are windows update had pending changes when you powered it down that f'cked the boot procedure.

Vorsprung

Thanks guys, will try that tomorrow, appreciate the suggestions

Vorsprung

Just an update...dropped it in to a local place who figured the hard drive had gone kaput,managed to get all the data back into a replacement,picking it up tomorrow.

Thanks for all your suggestions and help!