I have returned from a weeks holiday to a dead laptop.

My usage pattern is the laptop gets plugged in, switched on and used for Facebook, ebay and other general browsing plus the odd letter and nothing else very important.

At the end of the session I will put it into "sleep mode" until several hours later when I need it again. Hence a quick prod of the power button wakens it within a few seconds.

Occasionally I will switch it off (close it down) properly, perhaps once or twice a week or if it otherwise appears to be getting a little slow.

I also shut it down if I go away on holiday which I did last week.

I have returned today, plugged it in and pressed the power button. The screen illuminates slightly, I hear a slight electrical noise but nothing else. I press the power button again and get a slight electrical noise and the laptop powers down.

This appears to be infinitely repeatable. There are no messages on screen, no boot sequence, no bios options, no safe mode nothing nil nada just a slight illumination and a noise.

First job was to remove the 2.5"HDD and put it into a caddy - Oh joy, the HDD still lives and breathes so I've removed (or should I say copied) all the important photos onto the desktops HDD. There are about 23GB of photos so I will have to find a way of backing these up, but suffice to say, the HDD works and I have the important stuff off.

It's a Samsung on a 3ghz dual core with 2GB RAM and is about 4 or 5 years old. The battery has been looked after and still holds up for 45minutes or so in power conservation mode.

So basically I'm wondering what my first steps might be in trying to resuscitate the old girl?

Any dead laptop experts out there . . . ?

Cheers Phil