Oh wow - 2 machines!
I am afraid I don't know what's wrong, but, it does not look good. I hope the second laptop was yours too. Obviously you don't want to connect that ext. HDD to anything else. Does that ext HDD have its own power block? Or did it get its power from the laptop? If a separate power block, I would test it before using it again too.
Unfortunately, it would seem a fault in the external drive/enclosure, or its cable, caused some damaging electrical current to contact the wrong connection on the USB ports. I suspect (hope!) it is no more than a thermistor (a protection device on the motherboard, similar to a fusible link) that blew, to protect the rest of the system - that still requires a trip to the repair shop. If that is the problem, the repair should not cost much. Keep your fingers crossed, because this could also be the motherboard, and in extreme cases, anything plugged into the motherboard, such as RAM and the CPU.
- believe me, I winced when I typed it! I feel your pain - there's no way to sugar coat this.
Insult to injury, be warned, repair costs for laptops are always more expensive because they are a pain to work on - much more time and difficulties, compared to a PC, just gaining access to the failed part. Also laptop makers tend to use proprietary (read: more expensive and hard-to-find) parts.
So right now, neither computer is able to boot?
When troubleshooting over the Internet, it is much better to work on one computer at a time to avoid confusion - this is true even if the problems appears to be identical. The problem is, even with 2 computers that came off the assembly line together, within minutes of powering up for the very first time, configurations and customizations start the process that turns every computer in the world, into a unique computer.
So I would ask that you pick one computer and we will start with that. Then, after we determine the fate of Laptop1, we can move on to Laptop2.
Alternatively, you can start a new thread for the second - but if me, I would wait, then take what's learned and work the second laptop.
I think your first step is to find a PC with a nice chunk of HD space free. Then pull the hard drive from one of the laptops and use a
Laptop to IDE Hard Drive Adapter to connect the drive as a "Slave" off the PC. Then backup any critical/personal data. Then do the same for the other laptop's drive.
Then for us to help more, we need to know more about this laptop - make and model number. And the information provided in the BSOD (blue screen of death) error message is important. These
STOP Messages can often point right to the cause, or hopefully point in the right direction.
