Back in June I flew ALB to FLL and then returned a few days later. When I got to the hotel in Florida, my laptop would not start up with any coaxing. After a few hours in the hotel it finally started up and worked flawlessly the rest of the trip.

On my return home, the first time I pulled it out to try and start it, it wouldn't start again with any type of coaxing. Finally after a few hours, it decided to start. Since then, it's started up without incident.

The only common thread that I can find is that it was run through the x-ray machine at airport screening and had issues the first time it was started after that.

The battery for the laptop is dead so I never turned it on during my air travels.

Has anyone else had problems with their laptop after going through the x-ray machine? Anyone have an idea what might have caused the laptop to have this kind of problem after being screened?

I haven't flown since then but will be flying tomorrow. I was thinking of pulling a few components and putting them in my checked bag in hopes of them avoiding the x-ray machine to narrow down the problem.

I don't believe any frequent flyers can attribute laptop problems to X-Ray machines. To the rough handling by TSA, perhaps, but not to the X-ray processing...

Give more detail to your problems...

Well, there's not much more detail to provide.

For several hours after trying to start the laptop, it just wouldn't start on both occasions. Push the power button and nothing would happen.

The TSA people never really handled it and I'm pretty particular about how I carry it in my carry on. I use mouse pads on both sides of it to protect it and hopefully lessen any chance of it taking any kind of shock.

That's not the only common thread. Both times the device was put in a metal tube and pressurized to 100ft below field altitude, then up to 8000ft AGL and then back down to 100ft below field altitude and then the door was opened. Maybe your hard drive has a slight pressure leak that took a few hours to equalize or something like that? Who knows.

How are you describing coaxing? What was happening when you tried to start it?

My coaxing was taking the slide in drives in and out. Pulling the hard drive out and checking to see that the connection was put back together nice and tight and poking around a bit to see if everything else I could check looked in good shape. At the time, I was at a loss because I can take apart a desktop but not up for the challenge of a laptop.

When it first happened, it did power on but nothing came up on the monitor. It also didn't have the usual noises I expect to hear during startup. Since reading the replies (and I've appreciated all of them), and giving me the chance to think back further about the problem at the time, I have to suspect it might be hard drive related. Even still, other than the suggestion that there may be a pressure leak (I wasn't aware hard drives were sealed), I couldn't think of anything else that may have triggered the onset of a potential hard drive problem during travel other than the x-ray machine and now the possibility of pressurization having an impact.

Good thought! Maybe that could have contributed to my laptop HD crashing within two years after purchase.

- Pat

Sounds to me like you need to have your hard drive looked at! It's amazing how these things occur when you have just done something which leads you to think the computer has been affected: on December 31, 1999, amid all the hullabaloo about the Millenium Bug, my laptop was set to Moscow time, but I was in the UK (3 hours time difference). Finishing off something or other on the laptop before the big New Year party, I was dismayed when the laptop shut itself down promptly at 9.00 p.m. UK time (i.e. the stroke of midnight on the computer clock!). The Millenium Bug had struck! Or so I thought! No amount of coaxing would persuade the thing to come back on! When I finally got it to a computer specialist a couple of days later(yes, January 2), it turned out my hard drive had simply chosen that precise moment to crash, no bugs, no nothing, just sheer exhaustion from years of overwork! Luckily, we did manage to retrieve my most important data files, but that was a lesson for me in always making a backup, I can tell you!

It's very very very unlikely to be anything to do with the X-rays themselves. The most modern generation of airport X-ray machines use such a low dose that it would be safe for a human to be put through once or twice.

Our experience (about 100 laptops currently) is that their failure rate is proportional to how much they are carried around, squished into aircraft overhead bins, left to slide around in the boots (trunks) of cars, left in cars overnight in winter to freeze and then thaw out, etc. Which if you have any good experience of mechanical/electrical devices is exactly what you would expect.

X-rays are a convenient thing to blame things on, but it is just our old friend wear-and-tear that seems to do it. We have the same experiences with PC projectors.

Several times I had similar problems with my now four year old Sony Vaio. I finally realized what had happened was the "deep sleep" button had been pressed during travel and I need another step to reactivate, which I hadn't remembered because it was a feature I hadn't planned to use (and thought was turned off). Anyhow, the machine releases by itself in a few hours, so it all seemed mysterious. I attributed it to cold, altitude, possible hard drive dying, ... I was already researching a replacement.

Sylvia

I had bought a new IOMagic hard drive prior to flying overseas. It worked like a champ (both importing and exporting data) prior to taking off. I put it in my carry-on, had it scanned at the airport. When I got home, the power was non-responsive for 2 days. Then magically, on the 3rd day, power started working again. It, however; still doesn't transfer information in the manner that is used to. Instead of it taking a minute to transfer and cd's worth of information, it takes 20 minutes or more.

My wife was also carrying a 1 week old Vick's Breathe Right inhaler in her carry-on, the power for it took 7 days before it decided it would power on.

There was also a BRAND NEW Sony DVD player in her carry on....it only took 2 days before it began to power up.

That's 3 very different sets of technology, with the same end result, from the same airport X-Ray scanner....

Do you think they are trying some new EMP technology or something?

I used to import laptops - albeit more than 10 years ago now... I had a few exhibiting similar behaviour... The most common complaint was that a sales guy would take it out on the road and it wouldn't boot on arrival. Ditto on return. But the next day, it would start up fine.

We never got to the bottom of it but there were two theories floating around. One was that the TOD chip battery would go flat (time-of-day chip... a form of CMOS memory). It would require a few hours of power before it had sufficiently charged to allow the clock to tick. Without this, the laptops would crash on booting. I believe modern PCs are different - certainly I've had batteries go flat so the PC forgets its settings - but it will still boot. (This is a small battery on the motherboard, not the main battery on a laptop.) Sometimes they are rechargeable, sometimes they are lithium non-rechargeables.

We also noticed that it often happened after sudden temperature variation - and wondered if it was condensation forming on certain components causing a short. Eventually this would evaporate off and the PC would boot normally.

Just some thoughts...

I seriously doubt it's the X-Ray. I would be more concerned with the rapid altitude change affecting the laptop rather than the xraying.

Or condensation.