laptop problem

[erkster]

hey guys

problem:

when i try to boot up my laptop its starts up, and before it gets to the bios it seems it just goes into sleep mode, and i can't do anything with it.

i'm not much of a techy but my gut feeling is that either (a) virus. or (b) my laptop isn't getting power(i've tried booting running off of battery and wall power(when plugged into the wall the light does come on))

but seeing as i can't get any kind of screen, to try and do a virus scan i'm completely lost. but seeing as i was planing on wiping the hard drive and reloading the OS in the near future anyways, i have no problem doing that if it would help solve the problem.

any help would be much appreciated
thank you

 

[MindoverMaster]

You mean after the Windows Splash screen? What OS are you running? Might want to run Memtest86+ - Advanced Memory Diagnostic Tool to be on the safe side. Please burn the ISO file. Do not extract or put it onto a cd as a ISO file.

 

[erkster]

thanks for the reply, (i'm running vista)but i can't run anything on my laptop because when i boot it up i hear it start up and then literally 2 seconds later it goes into a sleep modeish state

 

[MindoverMaster]

Try, if you know how, to take your hard drive out. Boot up again, and see if it posts up an error saying "No Operating System installed" If so, your HDD might be bad.

If not, I would blame your RAM.

 

[NoNameNY]

I would guess ram also. If it boots up for longer than that I would say thermal event

 

[MindoverMaster]

RAM can easily run up to a point where the sector is bad. That would be when it shuts down/sleeps.

 

[erkster]

ok so heres what i've tired:

booting the laptop without the HDD in

and booting without RAM in

both situations didn't change anything, i'm not sure if trying to boot without RAM tells you anything, but i know that i've taken the RAM out and then improperly replaced it and it gave me errors(this was a while ago, i'm quite positive its unrelated).

i have had overheating problems with the laptop, but i still have a gut feeling that it's a virus related problem.
any ideas?

and thanks for the help so far.

UPDATE:
i noticed a little bit of white gunk on one of the RAM chips (in between the pin strips)(would take a picture, but phone won't focus enough that you can see it) i don't know what it is ,but i doubt its suppose to be there

 

[NoNameNY]

There's thermal paste in the ram sockets? If you are pulling both the ram and cpu and the problem remains its not a virus at all

 

[erkster]

i'm guessing that was a mistype, but i took the HDD out not the CPU(just want to be on the same page )
so likely i'll have to get new RAM?

 

[MindoverMaster]

Yea, that's not a virus. You can't run the laptop without RAM. A virus lives on your HDD, nothing else. Being that you had the same problem while the HDD is out, we can rule that out.

You might want to try to reset BIOS.

Edit: Take the HDD out