Originally Posted by
catocony
I've never had TSA ask me to turn on a device to see if it works.
It happened to me multiple times pre-9/11 but never since then. Stupid screener thought she had found contraband because my camera didn't "work"--you're not going to see anything through a DSLR without a lens attached!
I've also traveled with one whose battery was bad enough it couldn't actually boot. It worked for me, I was just using it plugged in. When I was asked to turn it on I warned the guy that the battery was all but useless and it would die during boot, but he was ok with simply seeing the POST screen. (And I stopped the boot at that point rather than risk filesystem damage from an improper shutdown while loading Windows.)