Anyone know of a good computer repair company? | Bloggers Lair | Yakezie Forums

Do you still have the restore discs?  If you do, the process is pretty cut and dry and easy to follow along with.  Does it boot at all now?  e.g. when you hit the power button, you can hear the fans kicking in and etc?  If so, nothing shows on the screen at all?  At the very least, you should see the bios splash screen (Dell logo, or whatever) when it boots. 

To be honest, the fact that the screen never shows anything might be indicative of a larger problem.  It's hard to say for sure, without being able to get my hands on it.  But, even without a hard drive, you should still see a bios splash screen on the monitor as it's booting, then a message about not being able to find a system disk. 

My best guess (It's an educated one, but still a guess) is that you've got something funky going on with your motherboard.  The iastor.sys driver is a driver used for the hard drive controller.  It's possible that it was flipping an error because it was having trouble communicating through the bus (data pathway).  If it was a progressive issue, then that could have just been the first indicator that something was going bad.  Usually when something like that starts to happen, it goes quickly, so that would also explain the sudden loss of any video at all since most laptops have onboard (physically attached to motherboard) video. 

Like I said, it's an educated guess without being able to see it and troubleshoot, but I work at a repair shop, so I say this from experience.  Obviously, someone local who could take a physical look at it might be able to better diagnose it.  If it is the motherboard, though, expect it to cost several hundred to fix.  You can sometimes find a seller/repair on ebay, just be sure to double check their feedback, that they've done the repair at least 5 or so times before, and recently. 

jmichelsen said:

I agree with Beating, sounds like a motherboard issue. I'd take it to a local repair shop over a chain if you want confirmation, in my experience they usually have more talent vs flowchart junkies. 

 

Any chance it's under warranty?

 

Motherboards for laptops are pricey and labor, if you have someone swap it, can get up there. It's a real pain to do. Most likely your data is still okay, but it may be time to start checking out laptop prices. I have a few old reliable laptops, if you'd like one I can see what I've got and you'd just have to pay shipping. They are commercial grade Lenovos from maybe 5 years ago, rock solid but not the biggest screen or newest technology.

Not under warranty – of course.  Thanks for the advice.  My son thought maybe we could try switching out the hard drive, which he made sound easy….?

That is an incredibly generous offer…shoot me an email at marie (at) familymoneyvalues (dot) com if you are still offering!

Well all, it was the motherboard – according to a local repair shop I found.  So I now have a brand spanking new laptop and my son has my $600 paperweight with which to play.

My desktop was severely infected and had to have the hard drive wiped and operating system reloaded!  Expensive week!

Thanks for all of your input.  I really appreciated it.