laptop keeps turning off

[okie11]

here is the problem; every time i try to turn my laptop on the power dies within 5 seconds. This happens whether the battery is in or not, whether i try using just the battery or just the ac power, i've opened it up and don't see any pinched cables but i'm not an expert. the laptop is a HP pavillion ZT1180. its about 4 years old has 512 mb ram and a 1.2GHz mobile Pentium III

[query]

Could be any one of a number of things.  Reseat the RAM, drives, battery and any cards.  Check the AC adapter - if it has a pilot LED, be sure it's on.  If the adapter is faulty, replace it.

Otherwise, it's likely there's an internal fault - most likely the system board, which on a notebook can be very expensive ($400-500+) to replace, if the system is out of warranty.

[okie11]

the reseating of the ram seems to have worked, thanks a lotfor the suggestion, hopefully thats all it was.

[okie11]

well tried to reboot it and it wouldn't, so back to the drawing board, it's weird cause it would start powering up then just shut off. On occasion it will boot up but just be a black screen. I am baffled, can't afford to have it repaired and can't afford not to.

[okie11]

i think it's a bad hard drive, i noticed the disk light goes out first. i removed the drive and put it back in and it rebooted, maybe it's time to replace the drive. could definitely use a larger one.

[Carskick]

Who is the manufacturer of the disk drive? See if you can boot to a CD or floppy with disk diagnostic software. Usually, a bad hard drive won't force the laptop off, but could cause it to hang on a black screen or with strange boot messages. Can you get into the BIOS or boot to a CD?