My wife has a Gateway laptop (366 MHz, about 3 years old). She tripped over a USB cord and the laptop fell off a shelf about 3 ft. above a hardwood floor (the computer was running at the time). There are visible cracks in the case/lid that houses the LCD screen at both hinge points that run a couple of inches out into the lid. When you try to boot the computer, it powers-on and you briefly see the hard-drive icon appear on the little black & white LCD screen that shows what's going on - the hard drive spins but the computer doesn't boot and the display remains totally black.

A friend has recoverd my data from the hard drive and suggested trying to boot from a floppy with the hard drive removed, but it will not boot from the floppy. I also hooked up the external monitor output to see if I got a live display, but it stays totally blank.

I understand that laptop repairs are very expensive, so the point of all this is: Would you even risk a diagnostic charge (have no idea, but guess it would be $75 minimum?) to find out if it is repairable? If the repair bills were getting closer to $1000 than $500, I probably would just rather buy a new laptop with much faster processor, bigger HD, CD burner, etc.

What's the probablility this thing is pretty much a doorstop? What would you do?

Thanks,
John