My grandaughters laptop has a problem, lots of power in the battery, when you switch on, the disc drive light flashes and the power indicater light illuminates and that is it.
No fan, no noise, nothing, can anybody give me any idea as to the startup sequence maybe to help solve the problem. or do I take it to a techie.
Electro if you have read this post then I can tell you about mine. The Compaq with the keyboard error, I replaced the keyboard and still no joy, so it is likely to be as you say "keyboard search logic" whatever that is but thanks anyway

Leslie, July 2012

On a reasonably recent computer, no fan noise is not an indication of something wrong. If the cooling is enough without the fan, it can stop, or not start.
Some modern hard drives are realy quiet, and if it's an SSD, then it never make any noise: NO moving parts.

Power up end pre-boot sequence:
Power on
POST (Power On Self Test)
Probably some very qwick flashing of the Num lock, Caps lock and Scroll lock leds (often to fast to be seen)
If the POST don't complete, the state of those LEDs indicate when the POST encountered a stop error.
NO lights may indicate a dead CPU or some other fatal situation like the system clock not working. In this case, you very probably need to replace the laptop. It it's not to old, you may be able to change the CPU.
If the code indicate a RAM isue, it can often be resolved by removing the RAM and placing it back in the same location or replacing the RAM sticks.
If the code indicate a video isue, you probably need to replace the laptop.
END OF POST or PREBOOT PHASE.

Pause of a few seconds to allow you to enter the BIOS setup.

Start loading the operating system or BOOT phase.
Find and load the NTLDR file.
A failure here show a message that say "Can't find NTLDR"
Load the root processes, parse and execute the boot commands.
A failure here leave you with a black screen with a flaching underscore in the uper left corner of the screen.
Start the core Windows process, show the boot splash then show the logon screen.
If only a single profile without password, fall through to the desktop.

Any software isue may be resolved by using an install CD or DVD and doing a repair.
Boot from the media and when asked, chose "Update".
You can use a version obtained from any P2P network for that purpose if you don't have the install CD or DVD. It will honour your user key and registration.
This will replace the OS files with fresh copies. It will remove any OS updates but will preserve the installed programms and user data.

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For your keyboard, the logic circuits mentioned is part of the board holding the keys. If you changed the keyboard, you also changed those logic circuits.

Make sure that the new keyboard is realy correctly connected. On a laptop, it can be tricky.

Electro, July 2012