Mr. Van Pelt's Diagnostics Assessment and repair

Diagnostics of Non-Productive Laptop

Laptop Computer arrived semi-responsive and producing no video.

Upon Disassembly and disconnecting the internal battery while booting to USB, it was found that the owner's hard drive is toast.

There are options:

Replace the hard drive (but then you will also need an operating system.); this can get costly (Best Buy will probably have a replacement drive for $70+/- added to an os install (68.00)

or

Since you have an ssd drive, presently being used in the capacity of a pseudo-key to the hard drive (outrageous), I can turn that "feature" off in bios and install an os on the ssd (this would save you the cost of a replacement hard drive but will limit the amount of available storage space due to the ssd having less capacity.

As a glimmer of hope, in the video you see me using a utility to boot to. Whereas the owner's os refuses to boot, the computer may still start using the owner's existing damaged hard drive!

It is not uncommon for a defective drive to boot randomly and apparently without cause. This is partly due to the fact that all hardware from its manufactured date is in the pre-fail state. The degree in which a component may be in the "pre-fail" stage dictates the degree of ill-effects that a computer may exhibit.

Spring