Lenovo S10-2 won't start. Help!

[CDF]

Hello All!

Have a problem with my wife's Lenovo S10-2. Yesterday, after a 8-10 hours of netbook's inactivity (w/o heavy tasks), I found it deadly hanged. I turned it off by pressing a Power button by ~5 secs.

After turning on again, I see only blank screen with non-blinking cursor at top-left corner. No Lenovo's splash screen, no beeps, no reaction on F2 or other keys. It's still can be powered off by pressing Power for 5 secs.

Note: the cooler starts up with power on, but stops at same time as the blank screen with cursor appears.

Removing HDD and GSM card did not bring any effect.  W/o RAM, netbook also doesn't say any beeps, but the screen is all black, with no backlight.

Tried to clear CMOS by removing a battery, power cord and pressing Power by 60 secs. No changes at all.

I also tried to enter BIOS recovery mode by pressing Fn-B while connecting power cord w/o battery. It starts with cooler working constantly, black screen (as described), but still no beeps. No SD or USB activity too -> no BIOS ROM search on external media.

The cursor is not blinking, does it mean anything? Could it be hanged by overheating in 2-3 seconds after power on?

I saw similar problems ten years ago with Intel Celeron 600, which halted after 8-10 seconds after powering on, because there were no thermal grease on CPU at all.

Any suggestions? What should I check?

P.S. Sorry for bad English, that's not my native language)

[yigit]

hi cdf.

i don't have s10-2 but as i remember it comes with soldered and another ram stick. it usually happens when the soldered ram is out of order but not sure what your problem really is.

still, whatever your issue is you will need hardware support cause you tried all of the suggestions that i may suggest. if you have valid warranty, contact lenovo support line for possible mainboard replacement.

hope this helps.

[CDF]

my S10-2 have second internal RAM slot, not a soldered RAM, and it's empty. I tested RAM on another notebook, no problems were found. Can it be BIOS problem? I heared that (on another notebooks) Fn-B may not working because of invalid BIOS checksum (when it corrupted), in that case it can be restored only with external SPI programmer.

Unfortunately, the warranty was expired. So I have to search local solution for my problem.

[yigit]

do you hear any beep when you remove the ram sticks then start-up your computer?

[CDF]

No beeps at all, with or without RAM. Although, I didn't hear any beeps in normal boot too, since the sound volume was muted via FN keys. Maybe it's still muted. Is there a way to reset master volume?

I brought the netbook to local service yesterday, their tech thinks it may be south bridge, or really corrupted BIOS.

[yigit]

no need to turn on the sound to hear the beep i was talking about. it's different and comes from mainboard.

to be honest, it's hard to diagnose the issue from here. could be ram, mainboard, graphic card, cable issue. sorry to say that but better to contact local/lenovo support center.

[CDF]

Thanks. I was informed by local service center that BIOS chip is dead. For now, they're looking for a replacement.