Old laptop problem

[Kaloustaphae]

Ok so this isn't exactly in the vein of what's already here lately, but I've got a problem with my girlfriend's old laptop. It's a Toshiba Tecra A9 running Windows Vista Basic and was on loan from a University, but they upgraded their computer stock and for some reason didn't want it back. Anyway, a couple of years ago it stopped booting up and recently I found it and have been trying to fix it.

It gets to the Toshiba splash screen ok, and I can even select where to boot up from, be it HDD, CD, stick, etc. Once it's past the splash screen I get a blank screen and nothing happens. Can't hear fans going or anything. At first I thought maybe the HDD was shot, but I happened to have a CD with Linux Fedora 10 (not sure why), so I popped that in there. Linux OS boots from CD and I was able to get access to the contents of the HDD with no problems. Files are all intact, too. I've also been in the BIOS and I can't see anything wrong, but I'm not so experienced in that area.

Does anyone have any idea about what the problem might be? The only other idea I have is a virus, as my girlfriend did say it was showing some signs of a virus before it gave up the ghost. But if so, how can I fix that if I can't boot it up?

Sorry this is so long and thanks in advance for any input!

 

[sudden0utburst]

could be many many things u have to test each piece... could be a harddrive still could be just going and ur able (luckily) to access ur files, id test the harddrive sometime...but i doubt thats it..

but anyways it could be the power supply, could be the ram.. are you sure its set to boot to the correct hard disk? i doubt thats a virus

are you able to access safe mode? (f8)

u got a lot of testin to do, n u asked this 2 months ago, i wonder if ull ever even read this haha