When trying to start my acer travelmate 4150 this morning it wouldn't boot. The fan whirred and then shut off like when the battery is low so I plugged it into the mains and still had the same problem.

I tried taking out each ram stick and powering on to check and on removing one of the sticks the laptop started to show the acer flash screen but freezes when the "resuming windows" text comes up.

I've tried pressing various keys to get into bios or cancel the resume but it didnt work.

Any ideas?

Boot into safe mode and do a scan disk / every other repair you can think of.

Boot into safe mode and do a scan disk / every other repair you can think of.

Cant get it to, tried pressing all sorts of keys and it doesnt respond it just goes to the same "reuming windows" screen everytime.

can you get to the BIOS?

No it doesnt prompt me at the start, just goes straight to the acer spash screen then says resuming windows and crashes. Tries pressing f2 and f8 etc

Resuming windows indicates it might be in hibenation and not shut down so it's not booting from cold. When you press the on button and the lights come on release and then hold the button down, it might force it to shut down completly, then switch it back on again.
Depending on the model if the hard disk is easy to access take the main battery out and disconnect it from the mains then remove the hard drive, then try it again. Worth a try!

If the laptop is not actually shutting down, and going into hibernate then try pressing the power button for approx 6-8 seconds. This will force your laptop to shutdown fully (hardware shutdown) and then when you try to reboot, the memory will be clear and you should be able to boot normally.

I've tried removing the hdd and battery. I just tried tuning it off before it got to the resuming bit and when i boot up again it still tries to resume :S

Take the resume battery out, some times under the keyboard.
Might work!!

Hmmm, I'm not sure about taking the whole thing apart :S

I have a nice Amilo Si1848 for sale if you get really stuck!
:)

Eeek, really hope it doesnt have to come to buying a new one! >___> Was thinking of maybe trying to hook the HDD up to a pc an reformatting it or something. I didnt have anything terribly imortant on it anyways if i cant back it up.

What did it do with no drive in? Anything?

You can get adaptors to convert to standard IDE or just stick it in someone elses laptop and see what it does

I tried starting up without the HDD and I just get a blinking cursor in the top left corner. This think might not be fixable -____-

Eeek, really hope it doesnt have to come to buying a new one! >___> Was thinking of maybe trying to hook the HDD up to a pc an reformatting it or something. I didnt have anything terribly imortant on it anyways if i cant back it up.you shouldn't have to buy a new one

how long do you wait before deciding it's not going to start ?, it could be trying to access a non existent network resource and it can take a few minutes before it gives up, wait at least five minutes before deciding it's a non starter

then try booting from the installation CD and using the recovery console to do a check of the hard disk

see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314058/en-us for details on starting the recovery console and running chkdsk

worst case you can reformat and reinstall from the installation CD without opening the laptop and taking the drive out

then try booting from the installation CD and using the recovery console to do a check of the hard disk

see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314058/en-us for details on starting the recovery console and running chkdsk

worst case you can reformat and reinstall from the installation CD without opening the laptop and taking the drive out

I only have the acer recovery disc that came with the laptop, I never recieved a proper windows CD and It wont read it when it starts up.

I left it for 5-10 mins with the HDD in so i'll try leaving it running without it in too.

if it won't go with the hard disk in after 15 minutes then there's a definite fault either in the software on the disk or on the disk itself, leaving it running without a drive in won't help you

this Acer recovery disk is it a CD ? can you read it in other systems ?

... assuming you have access to other systems