Student-Contributed Wiki
An awesome team of students from our education program made this wiki.
The laptop is not turned on when you press start button
In the case where you do not have the power cord attach to your laptop, and you cannot turn on your laptop. Your battery may die. To check whether the cause of the issue is by dead battery, simply attach the power cord to your laptop. If the laptop can be power up normally, it indicates your battery is dead. You need to replace the battery. Please click here to see the replacement guide for battery.
After run out of battery, if you cannot power up your laptop with power cord attached to it, check the charging LED icon. The charging LED icon is located in front the mouse trackpad on your laptop. If the LED icon is off when you attach the power cord to your laptop. The power cord may be broken or damaged. You need to buy a new power cord to replace the old power cord.
The screen does not response while you are using the laptop.
One of the most common cause of non-response screen is that your laptop is busy at the moment. The CPU is handling a lot of calculations and tasks. It cannot update the screen in the rate as fast as the normal operation. If that is the case, just wait for few minutes until the laptop to finish the current task.
If your screen does not respond, one of the other common reasons could be that the RAM/memory in your laptop is too small to handle all the application open at one time. You can close unwanted applications to release more RAM/memory to the application you want to use. Or you can upgrade your RAM/memory size. Click here for the replacement guide for RAM/memory
Some computer viruses can cause not responding screen. Those computer viruses will run background tasks without your notice, or they freeze your laptop on purpose. You can enter Windows safe mode by pressing F8 when you restart your laptop. Then delete and uninstall suspicious programs and files. You can also install some antivirus software such Norton, McAfee, etc.
Sometimes, if your hard drive was broken, it will cause the not responding screen too. The system may not be able to load a system file because the specific file that CPU is trying to access is either missing or broken. You need to replace the hard drive and re-install the operation system. Please click here for the replacement guide of Hard Drive
There is a noise coming from somewhere inside the laptop.
Sometimes dust or dirt can get stuck in the CPU fan. To clean the CPU fan, use a can of compressed air and spray it through the vent at where the fan is located. You can also use a handheld vacuum to clean the area of the fan vent. If any dirt gets stuck coming out, you can use a cotton swab to clean the vent.
The laptop may have a broken fan if there is still a noise after cleaning it. You need to replace your fan, and you can find instructions here.
One of the common cause of the noise fan is that the fan is spinning at very high speed. To reduce the speed of the fan, simply close unwanted tasks to reduce the load of CPU. If the fan still spinning in very high speed, try to restart the laptop.
Nothing happens when the keyboard is pressed.
Make sure that there is no debris between the keys and that the keys can be fully pressed down without a problem. If there seems to be something blocking the keys, you can use compressed air to clean and remove the dirt. If the compressed air does not remove everything, you can use a cotton swab to clean the area under the keys that are sticky.
If cleaning the keys does not work service may be required to replace the damaged keyboard. You can find information on how to service the keyboard by clicking here
When you insert CD to the laptop, the laptop is not responding to the CD just inserted.
The CD might be dirty so that the optical drive can not read the CD. To clean the CD, simply take the CD out, rinse it with water, and dry it with a paper towel.
Different CDs need a supported software to open it. For example, a music player may not be able to open a video CDs. If that is the case, you can search compatible CD opener software online and download the newest version of the software.
If that is the case, the optical drive has to be replaced, please see a replace guide for replacing the optical drive by click here.
You cannot connect your Wi-Fi on the laptop.
If you cannot find your router names in your wireless connection options list located the right bottom of your screen. Make sure the power cord of the router is plugged in. Once your have power up your router, wait for few minutes. Try to reconnect your laptop to your router. If you still cannot connect the internet, please try to restart your PC
If you see a red cross on the wireless adapter icon on the right bottom corner of your screen, it may cause by your accidentally turn the WIFI switch off. To turn on the WIFI, simply put the WIFI switch on the side of your laptop to on position.