Laptop died - help?

Once you're done reading this post you'll understand I know the BASEST info regarding computers, yet when it comes to issues like these I know nothing. So I'll just post the story and observations, and hopefully someone can help from there:

Yesterday morning I was working on college apps when I turned on my laptop (Toshiba duo-core, refitted with 2 gigs of RAM in 1 gig sticks, 120 gig hard drive, etc. info available upon request) and got the same start screen I usually do. I realized, as it was just beginning to boot up, that I didn't need it at that time, and held down the power button until it turned off. 10-15 min later, when I needed it, I turned it on and the screen stayed black while everything else made the normal boot-up sounds.

I had had this same problem in July, and when I brought my laptop to Best Buy at the time they simply popped the RAM shield off, popped the cards out, put them back in, and it worked again, saying that sometimes RAM can get jostled into bad positions where it doesn't work, thus preventing the display from booting up.

When I went to Best Buy yesterday, explaining this as the same problem, the guy did the exact same thing in July - but the display still doesn't work. He put his hands on the place above the motherboard and said it felt like it wasn't "spinning," possibly indicating a crashed motherboard. However, when I placed my hands on that area today trying to boot up the computer for the millionth time, I DEFINITELY felt the motherboard "spinning," and it made the sounds, as usual, of a normal boot up cycle.

So if it's not the RAM, what is it? Could my entire monitor have crashed, or something have crashed, with no warning just 10-15 min after it was working perfectly? I understand that computers have a 3-4 year shelf life, but my 2 and a half year old gaming laptop should at least show signs of decaying life before crashing, I would THINK.

If ANYONE can help with this situation it would be great, because if worse comes to worse I'll have to get a new laptop, which isn't really plausible for a broke kid like me. Thanks!

When you say it made normal boot up sounds, do you mean you heard it booting into windows? You heard the chime?

Also when your screen was black, did it have black lighting? or was just power off black (different from the display showing the colour black).

Your motherboard doens't SPIN, the only moving parts in your computer are your DVD/CD drives and harddrives...and fans.

If it was a ram problem, when you turn on your computer you shouldn't even see the red "Toshba" when you turn on the computer, just power on black.

It could be a problem between the connection of your monitor to the video card, in this case you should see power off black.

You can also try starting the computer with just one of the two 1GB sticks and see if it solves any problems.

Running a memory test on your ram sticks could also help to determine if they're faulty or not.

I don't think RAM gets "stuck"

When you say it made normal boot up sounds, do you mean you heard it booting into windows? You heard the chime?

Also when your screen was black, did it have black lighting? or was just power off black (different from the display showing the colour black).

Your motherboard doens't SPIN, the only moving parts in your computer are your DVD/CD drives and harddrives...and fans.

If it was a ram problem, when you turn on your computer you shouldn't even see the red "Toshba" when you turn on the computer, just power on black.

It could be a problem between the connection of your monitor to the video card, in this case you should see power off black.

You can also try starting the computer with just one of the two 1GB sticks and see if it solves any problems.

Running a memory test on your ram sticks could also help to determine if they're faulty or not.

I don't think RAM gets "stuck"

I just bought the RAM sticks 5 months ago, which is why I'm pretty sure they can't be faulty.

When I power up the computer, all I see is power off black. Nothing changes on the screen.

When I say I hear normal boot up sounds, it means I hear the motherboard making sounds like it always does signaling it just started up. When I talk about it "spinning," I mean that when I put my hands on the area over the motherboard, I can feel vibrations from something working below them, and when I power off the computer they stop. So that's my computer novice diagnosis that my motherboard isn't fried.

But when I talked to some compy-savvy friends, I was told I probably fried a capacitor on either my video card or something to my display monitor by powering down with just the power switch.

As more information to possibly help solve this problem: I've hooked up the computer to an external monitor while powering it up, and it shows nothing either. Apparently that means the monitor isn't the problem, but the main computer itself is. GG =;=.

Even new ram can be faulty/become faulty.

Can you provide the model of your Laptop and the modle/make or specs of the ram you've bought.

Even new ram can be faulty/become faulty.

Can you provide the model of your Laptop and the modle/make or specs of the ram you've bought.

Laptop is a Toshiba Satellite A105-S4704 (if that seems wrong I can double check later), and the RAM sticks are Kingston 1 gig sticks.

Yeah, XTOTHEL is right...

Before I knew anything about computers (around the time the "worm" virus was around), I had gone to Best Buy, Circuit City, and even Fry's. Many techs say stuff like that. My brother worked at all three and Central Computers and Desert Storm (all have techs), and he was told if he didn't know about computers just trouble shoot and hope to fix it.

For all you know they might be giving you faulty info (again, because XTOTHEL is right, motherboards don't spin and if it was your RAM, it wouldn't boot up at all)

In my opinion, it might be your hard-drive. Laptops usually over heat to around 80 degrees. By the sound of it, it seems like you also turn on/off your laptop a lot. It is recommended that you don't always turn it on/off to make sure your hard drive lasts. Everytime you turn it on/off you grind the silicon disk a little bit more add that with the 80 degrees heat emitting from your hard drive....It's just my guess though, because I have been through that situation many times before...

Second of all...try not to touch your components while your laptop is on. My cousin did that >_>...the static from his hand short-circuted his whole set-up...be careful lol...

I actually wanted to know the specs of the kingston ram too. They should be PC4200 DDR2 533Mhz SDRAM.

@Cynic:
Hard drive disks aren't made of silicon. They also don't grind, nothing touches the spinning disk when the hard drive is on.