3 year old compaq laptop goes black and does not respond to any input

[ryangarfield]

Essentiallyi think the computer just freezes, I can never tell tho since I'm always away from the computer at the time and the screen has since shut off. Usually goes within 24 hours. The computer is still on but doesn't respond to trackpad/keyboard/any other buttons. Like I said it's 3 years old and don't want to put any real money into it, but could it just be overheating? Hard drive failures? Possibly a fresh install of windows? I'll be getting a new laptop soon enough, but would like this to still be usable. Any help is greatly appreciated. Cheers

[Joe The Dude]

If it's out of warranty, ya might wanna google around for a "How To Open and Clean Dust Out of" guide on the model number of your laptop.

[ryangarfield]

Yeah that would be worth a shot, I'll look into that

[classfour]

I had a Compaq with similar symptoms - that one had a bad power supply board (yours may not - it may just like to hibernate). It finally got to the point I'd have to pull the battery and reboot. In the end it suffered from a host of problems.

....that was the last Compaq that I owned.

I still won't purchase HP products - after they bought Compaq, they knew there were several models of notebooks that had motherboard issues - and wouldn't do a thing to help or support them.