dropped my laptop

[salmonmoose]

Is it making POST sounds - did it ever? (that familiar "beep" a PC makes when it turns on can provide useful information). If it is, try and describe the sound it makes (long beep, 3 short beeps sort of thing).

Otherwise, if you want to go it alone:

1) Panic.

2) Open up the access panels and make sure every thing is seated correctly (you should have panels that you can get to yourself - without taking the whole computer apart). Make sure you earth yourself first (the best way to do this is probably touch the metal on your desktop case). Don't force anything into place. Computers are probably about as fragile as a cat.

3) Take it in for repairs.

[olson]

It'll probably cost more to repair than its worth, but if they'll give a free estimate then its worth investigating. For me I would be more concerned about the data on the disk drive and would take that out first to check for files. Cheers!

[JayG]

Yeah, open up the panels on the bottom and check the basics. Most times the ram is super easy to access and shouldn't give you any trouble.

I had a similar problem once where I found out the connection to the harddrive had come a little loose and wasn't letting me do anything. I opened it up, fastened it back in and it worked like a charm.

Remember to ground yourself as others stated.

[ArtisticEndeavors]

You probably hosed your hd. HD's are very sensitive to vibration, most laptops have "some" protection from this. If my laptop servived a fall as high as my hip I'd be ecstatic. A bad HD can very well cause the hanging ("freezing") your experiencing. I wouldn't worry about much else. For as far as you're getting into boot, any other piece of equipment causing your issue is very sketch. For instance, if you had a ram stick that came loose, and one that didnt, you'd have no issue with getting into the os...you'd just have less ram. If your only stick of ram came loose you wouldn't get as far into the boot as your getting.

[salmonmoose]

You probably hosed your hd. HD's are very sensitive to vibration, most laptops have "some" protection from this. If my laptop servived a fall as high as my hip I'd be ecstatic. A bad HD can very well cause the hanging ("freezing") your experiencing. I wouldn't worry about much else. For as far as you're getting into boot, any other piece of equipment causing your issue is very sketch. For instance, if you had a ram stick that came loose, and one that didnt, you'd have no issue with getting into the os...you'd just have less ram. If your only stick of ram came loose you wouldn't get as far into the boot as your getting.

If they're parked, hard-drives are actually quite resilient :) I've dropped them from at least 5 feet and not caused issues. In fact, working at a hardware wholesaler, we used to get hard drives that were seized in a parked position, and you had to give them a solid crack against the table to make them run.

That said, if they're running, they're far more delicate, I've destroyed portable drives, just by knocking them off their edge.