I have another laptop to fix. This time, nothing happens when I try to turn it on other than the lights blink, the hard drive tries to spin up, the fans run, and then it turns off about half a second later. I'm thinking that something is failing the POST. The girl who brought it to me said that her monitor wasn't working initially, but everything seemed to boot up normally (from what she could tell without a monitor). I've already checked the CMOS battery and it's ok. I know that her regular laptop battery is dead, and she's been running it off of AC power.
Could the LCD screen be dead?
To test (or verify) that the boot process is reaching POST, remove the memory & see if POST will throw an error. If it does not, please provide the exact model & manufacturer for this laptop, as I've seen this issue with Dells that have add-on video cards (that have gone bad).
Just on a side note, verify the ac-adapter has the correct voltage, as it's possible that either the battery has died, or will no longer take a charge, & possibly will not boot up due to either of these issues.
Failing that, try removing all devices, wireless, DVD, hard drive, I like to do all at once, so that you can prove that just the core components are failing.
I would also test the RAM first.. My brand new computer build wouldn't post, and I had no idea why. Turned out the RAM used off the previous build was bad.
I removed everything. It is, as I thought, not a problem with any of those. I'll be checking out the monitor tomorrow.
By the way, the laptop is an HP Pavillion DV6700.
I took the whole monitor off, and it's still doing the exact same thing. Any ideas?
I would have to side with no2, and point you in the direction of a bad on-board GPU. However, it could also be the CPU itself, or a component on the board has gone bad. Can you find any bad capacitors? You will notice the top section has popped out some.
I would be surprised if there were capacitors that can pop on a laptop. The capacitors used on laptop motherboards look differently. You can check the power regulation chips (usually MAX1907 & MAX1999) on the motherboard for a fault.
Where would I find the GPU?
What's the model number? There is no general setup or design. Some have ad-on boards, most are integrated.
Ever think about trying a new battery? Might sound dumb, but some laptops will not boot if the battery is shot or removed...
The girl told me that she knew the battery was dead, which leads me to think that she had been using it with just the AC power. Apparently it had been working without the battery for a while. Couldn't running it without a good battery cause problems?
The problem is people tend to leave the laptop running in full power mode off the outlet. A lot of the time keeping it on constantly as if it were a desktop computer, and usually without proper ventilation. Internal temperature's in this case will rise, and eventually cause component failure.
(02-22-2010 12:44 AM)GT4AWD Wrote: [ -> ]Might sound dumb, but some laptops will not boot if the battery is shot or removed...
You are correct that a completely borked battery can cause a laptop not to boot, I've seen it a few times. It's like hearing nails on a chalkboard when I hear techs tell people that a laptop will not work without a battery removed. There may be one ore two models that don't allow this, but I have yet to see one.
I am posting this from my laptop with the battery removed. The 1st thing I do when testing laptops that don't boot, is remove the battery.
How's your laptop case going? I don't know enough about laptops to offer any help. Thought I'd ask though.
That one is out of here and now I have a third laptop in about 3 weeks to work on. I think the girl's mom wanted her to take it back, and since I couldn't tell whether it was the motherboard or the CPU, I wasn't going to order the motherboard and if it didn't work, have a wasted $100+. I was almost positive it was the motherboard though.
The laptop I have now though is just viruses. It shouldn't be any problem.
Good luck, I'm sure you can handle it...
These components in your laptop have a lot of heat because of their work. Laptop cooling system eliminates the cold air sucked through the heat through the input device and its components in the heat all around.
(02-23-2010 11:32 PM)RWenger Wrote: [ -> ]I was almost positive it was the motherboard though.
When I talked to her later after she took it to a computer repair place, she told me that they said it was the motherboard too. I was right.