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Can anyone help me and my new old computer?

09:22 / 07.12.03

Hi there! Well, as some of you know the reason I haven't been hanging out on barbelith lately is not because I've got fed up and left or anything like that, but because I have almost no internet access at work and have had no computer at home for a long time, to a series of fortunate and unfortunate circumstances. ANYWAY while I was in Chicago my Dad gave me his old IBM notebook computer - it's probably about 4 or even 5 years old, and it's slow but it works ok.

Now, I do still need an adaptor but I powered up the ol' battery the other day and while it was working just fine in Chicago, now (in London) I get an error message before I even get to the startup menu, and of course it won't let me go to the fully powered-up screen at all. I've ran a few tests on it (because it gave me test options) and the first box said that there was something wrong with the things that are installed, I think.

Any ideas? Any way to fix it, hopefully cheaply, possibly without taking it someplace to be fixed? Yes I brought it as a carry-on and no I don't think I have stepped on it... though I wonder if somehow something could have happened to it on the plane.

Please help me! Thanks!

11:49 / 07.12.03

Can't promise anything but it's impossible to tell what's wrong from what you've written above. Write down the error messages/test results and post them here.

14:07 / 07.12.03

If the problem's with the software that's installed and you've got nothing of particular importance on the hard drive yet, you could try just wiping it and starting again...?

14:38 / 07.12.03

Thanks for that Ignatius J, well unfortunately I don't have the computer with me at the moment but I will check it when I get home and type in the error messages for you - unfortunately i probably won't be able to share them with you until Tuesday morning as I'm not at my flat atm...

09:05 / 09.12.03

OK, two problems:

I can't get it to startup menu and I can't get it in safe mode. When I turn it on I go to the IBM "Hospital" type screen and these are the error messages I get.

At startup:

Error 0301
0192

When I run tests at the IBM hospital
System Board Test
DEV 001
ERR 96
FRU 3810

What does this mean? Does anybody know?

Everything else in the IBM hospital page appears to be fine...

10:04 / 09.12.03

Hmmm...well, the problem is with System Device 1 - or with something that needs to reference it - in your notebook, but without knowing the model number and without taking a look at BIOS it's pretty much impossible to determine was System Device 1 is. Can you get into BIOS (as you boot up there should be a keypress option to enter before anything loads, er...either F2 or BACKSPACE by default, I think). If you can, then we can probably work out what's faulty. Alternatively, you could send an email to the manufacturers, stating the model type and error messages you're getting. They may not be able to fix it directly, but will almost certainly be able to tell you what is misbehaving.

10:19 / 09.12.03

Ok well I don't know whether these codes are an accurate description of the problem, or whether your computer can generate them thinking it's one problem when really it's something else. But I can tell you what some of it means.

From the top...

301 is a keyboard problem, could be as simple as something resting on your keyboard at startup but seems to be more usually caused by a broken external keyboard. Try it without, if you have one.

192 is a cooling fan error.

DEV 001 just means a problem on the board.

ERR 96 no idea.

FRU 3810 - FRU is Field Replaceable Unit. The code is your computer giving two guesses at the most likely components to replace to fix the problems. You split it into two codes so we have 38 and 10, with 38 the most likely. 38 is the cooling fan, and 10 is the system board.

God knows what my advice is, I've never messed around inside laptops. But replacing the fan looks like a good start.

Hope you get it sorted.
-l