Will it power up without hard drive

Hi,

If everything else is OK the laptop should turn on without a hard drive installed and then progress to a point where there is a message on the screen saying that there is “no operating system found” or something similar due to no HDD (or any drive type e.g. USB, DVD/CD ) connected with a bootable operating system.

I cannot find any standalone software that will allow you to check the condition of the battery as most test programs require an operating system (OS) to be installed which means either a HDD or one installed on a USB flashdrive connected to the laptop, so that the laptop can boot using it.

A quick and dirty test to check if the battery is reasonably OK:

Connect the charger to the laptop and verify that the laptop shows that it is charging the battery.

If not then there may be a problem with the charger, the laptop’s charging circuit or the battery

If so let it fully charge and then start the laptop and get into BIOS.

Once you are in the BIOS menus, check that the laptop stays on when you disconnect the charger and how long it stays on for. If the battery is in a reasonably good condition, as the laptop is not doing much, power wise when in BIOS, it should stay on for hours. If it turns off in a short time then the battery is failing and should be replaced.

You could always download, install and run a free standalone memory test program from a USB flashdrive and check if the laptop stays on when on battery only when running the program.

It’s not that you’re testing the memory per se, but running the program means that a lot of the system hardware is being utilized to do so, meaning that more power is being used from the battery than when just in BIOS mode.

If it stays on for the full test and then if you reconnect the charger and it doesn’t take long to fully charge again the battery should be OK. If the laptop shuts down before the test is finished …..