Is There Any Hope If My Computer Won’t Boot?

It’s always a major shock these days if you press your computer’s power button and…nothing happens. Since one of the most common at-home solutions to computer problems is to restart the computer, if you can’t even get it on in the first place, there seems to be little hope of recovery! However, it’s not always a totally lost cause, and even when the computer won’t turn on, a reputable computer repair service like ours can usually still intervene to save the day. Before you bring your device to us, though, here are a few things to investigate.

Power Supply

If your computer or laptop won’t turn on, the problem could always be as simple as a loose plug in an electrical socket or a drained battery. Always check your cord to make sure it’s seated correctly, both in the wall and in your devices power receiver, and if you have a battery-powered device, to give it a little time to charge before trying to turn it on again. If a desktop if plugged in correctly, also check the power-supply switch on the back of the tower to make sure it’s flipped to ‘on.’ If none of these fix the problem and you happen to know you’ve been doing work inside your laptop or computer tower case, it may also be worth checking your internal power cable to make sure it is correctly connected. However, if none of these tricks solve the problem, very likely there is a serious issue with the power supply itself, in which case it’s time to talk to us about a repair.

Disk Error

If you can power on the computer but only get an error message about the bootable device, then the problem is a bit more complicated. Either your computer is failing to boot from the harddrive where your operating system is installed, or that harddrive has failed entirely and needs to be replaced. If you are comfortable with accessing the BIOS or Open Firmware of your device to look at the boot order, you can check these problems yourself. On the other hand, if that kind of trouble-shooting feels a bit beyond your paygrade, feel free to contact us for a diagnosis.

Crash during Boot

This problem could be caused by either your software or your hardware. We recommend rebooting in Recovery for Macs or running Startup Repair for Windows. This should accurately diagnose any software issues, but if the recovery and repair process fails, then quite likely the problem is rooted in your hardware and you will need expert help like ours to address the difficulty.

Of course, if you don’t want to deal with any of this, because life is busy or computers are intimidating, we will be happy to help you with any of these concerns for our low diagnostic fee of $49. If a problem does emerge, we waive that fee if you decide to use our services for repairs, so the whole process can be painless and inexpensive for you. Don’t forget to contact us next time your computer won’t boot, as we can always help.