Is it broken? Tips to try before you take it back, Laptop Edition

Editor’s note: Liz is a tech support person and all-around electro-guru. She’s got all kinds of random fix-it tips running around in her brain, some of which occasionally make it to paper (or pixels in this case). Here are her tips for what to check with your laptop before spending the time and money to bring it to, well, her. 1. Remove the battery and plug it in with an AC adapter. If your laptop works fine with just the AC adapter, it means your battery is bad and you need a new one. I can't tell you how many of these I see a day. You can order a new battery from your retailer or manufacturer. 2. Non-Destructive Restore- to do this, restart your computer and press the F11 key during the bootup process. Select "Non-Destructive System Restore" as the option. If there is no option to do this (such as on Toshiba or Dell notebooks), do not restore the laptop unless you are prepared to lose all your data. It’s always a good idea to back up your important files before doing any kind of restore. 3. Check for "lock" switches near the bottom of the screen or on the sides of the laptop. Spend at least 5 minutes looking over your computer and asking yourself what each switch, port, and button does. This includes your keyboard. 4. Check the memory. If you have some spare memory lying around (and who doesn’t), check to make sure your laptop doesn’t have faulty memory. If it boots, try running Memtest to solve BSOD (blue screens of death). 5. Check the hard drive. Run Western Digital Data Lifeguard. It's a free test you can download and boot to, and will see if your hard drive fails. If it does, take it to a specialist to see if your data can be recovered. 6. Try to boot in safe mode – restart your computer, and press F8 during the bootup process to boot into safe mode, and see if you can get there. This is a common way to see if files are corrupt, or if you can't get past your regular user password, you can login to the administrator account and change it there. 7. Run anti-virus and anti-spyware scans once, such as Spybot Search & Destroy, and AVG Free, to see if you have any virii or spyware. These can cause multiple boot issues and even fake BSOD. If all else fails, give me a call.