Start Up Issue? Thoughts?

[ColFantastic]

Computer savvy people:

My 18 month old laptop is wigging out. Friday night it kept shutting off on start up and I eventually got a windows load error. It 'righted' itself but shut down whenever I closed it, in defiance of my power options. It has worked fine the last couple days otherwise. Now it won't even turn on. I push power, all the lights turn on but then goes off within moments. Thoughts? How effed am I?

 

[Fell Open Ian]

The very first thing that I'd do is remove the HDD and check/backup your data. (external USB casings for laptop drives can be had for $10 if not cheaper)

 

[Megazell]

Did you check to see that the exhaust fan is still spinning properly and that there was no debris in it's way?

 

[ColFantastic]

So I took it to our campus repair center and it's the motherboard that went. Now I have to call around to see what it would cost to get it fixed since our campus place does mainly software and my computer is out of warranty. The guy suggested that I just get a new computer.

I left the computer with them to do a data backup while I figure out whether to repair or replace. I might use this as an impetus to build a good desktop PC for work/play.