laptop broke down

tried the knoppix...didn't work of course since I can't change the boot order. Tried anyway.

 

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I now tried the Knoppix in another computer and the CD is working. This is the first time I am using linux. This is my first post on sciforums under linux.

What a wonderful day if my dear laptop and best friend wouldn't have died on me.

 

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I went to a small laptop repair store. They were closed for the summer. Maybe that is a sign I should try to fiddle with it myself.

 

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As long as you're not a complete clutz, you shouldn't really hurt it any. The first problem of course is cracking it open. Does it have those torx head screws? Little star looking things? You'll probably need to go out and buy a tool kit or screwdriver set.

The next problem of course is figuring out which screws need to come out and how the damn thing comes apart. I take out two screw holding the little button pad (power, volume, all that) and two screws for the cd rom. Then, I pop off the button plate. The keyboard now folds down and I can disconnect it. Then, theres a large metal heat sink. 1 normal screw and 4 screws about the cpu numbered 1 to 4. It's recommended to unscrew them 4 to 1 and rescrew them 1 to 4. Just to make sure everything is snug and lined up.

You may also want to pick up some of the thermal grease to make sure that you get good contact when you place the heat sink (if yours is set up this way). After that, I just have to pop out the little battery. Pop it back in. And on the next boot reset the system time and voila. Back to working.

Good luck.

 

I'm going to gather up courage for a few hours or maybe a day. I have the feeling I lost all will to be at work today. Yesterday was bad, the sun is shining. I don't need troubles today.



I used to put in parts and such on my desktops...i have seen the inside of a computer before, however never a laptop.

 

Spuriousmonkey,

What you have to figure out is when you attempt to bootup, even though the screen is black is the harddrive being accessed (Is the OS operating behind a none functional screen)

It might just be that one of the cables that goes to the laptop screen has been over stretched or even nipped which will mean that the connector that it connects to on the board with might have been moved slightly out of alignment.

(This happened on an old laptop I got my hands on the fix was just to push the connector down a little to fix it)

The other reasons could be:
1: CMOS battery flat. You shoudld be able to find out if your laptop has a battery, if it has and if it's flattened, it could mean that your CMOS no longer holds the information it needs to bootup, in fact with a flat battery you could suggest that it can even store the default information, so this should be checked first.

2: Harddrive failure. Harddrives don't like major amounts of heat and can fail eventually, if the harddrive has failed then it will be "sticking" which means no OS would be booting up, however if your BIOS is suppose to load before access to the harddrive is made then this is not the problem.

3: RAM failure. Your RAM might have been destroyed by heat, or become moved out of place and need checking. RAM can sometimes effect the BIOS startup if it fails, however it's usually at the time of the RAM check not before anything appears on the screen.

4: Graphics chipset fried. Now this is a possibility laptops graphic chips can get extremely hot when used for a long period of time, it's possible for them to stop functioning correctly if not stop functioning completely.

Other than that, it pretty much covers all I can suggest. What I suggest you do is take a look yourself, make sure your static free, that you remember where which screws came from so you can put it back together and don't break any "Warranty seals" if you intend to take it back anywhere on the warranty.

I also suggest that if you pull it apart to look at and decide you can't fix it, that you still put it back together, otherwise you might come back another day and either find parts missing or can't remember what order the parts go in.

Lastly, if you feel really depressed about it, just think to yourself "What would Spuriousmonkey do?" and perhaps you can at least get a cartoon out of it

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Do you have another laptop? If so, try putting the hard drive in that one and booting it to see if it works. If not, maybe you can use someone else's. You need to find which stage in the boot sequence it's stopping at, if at all. It sounds like it's going through the bootup, but it's hard to tell when you can't use the screen.

 

I connected a monitor to my laptop. I figured I would see if it was the screen or something else. Nothing happened.

How can you tell if it is flat?




And the heat could be a problem. It is fairly hot here at the moment and although I haven't been playing games at that particular moment, I have done so in the past regularly. The laptop used to get real hot sometimes. Actually 2 days before I was playing unreal tournament on the LAN with someone when the latop suddenly just quit. Everything was blank immediately. Maybe that was a sign of things to come. I didn't backup at that point. Booted up again and it worked still.

na ja...

One of my ex'es said that she knew a guy who liked to fiddle with computer, but maybe it is better if I destroy the thing myself. At least I don't have to blame anyone if things go worng other than myself.


EDIT

If a harddrive is damaged by heat, can the data still be retrieved. If so I guess it would be really really expensive????

 

There are a few ways to work out it's flat, but all of them really require you being able to access it. (Although I wouldn't recommend putting it on your tongue in this case)

If it turns out to be a battery then you'll have no probs with your harddrive. When harddrives do go however they have many ways of going, for instance you could have heads that are sticking or the cylinders aren't rotating, however I would guess it would be possible to fix in those cases by taking the cylinders out and housing them in an identical harddrive casing to read.

Fingers crossed though its just the battery.

 

I decided not to do anything myself. I brought it away to a specialized company.

It will probably be extremely expensive.

 

Coward. He who risks not gains little.

 

Sure, but I have months of work on it.

 

Yeah, I guess there is that. It's highly doubtful that you'd damage the hard drive by doing the simple things I suggested. But, I guess better safe than sorry.

Good luck. If it turns out your hard drive is damaged, there are companies that do data recovery. But it'll cost you beaucoup bucks. Hope it doesn't come to that.

 

some geek suggested that my mainboard is fried. Which is rather costly to fix if it is even fixable.

na ja...I spend most of my time in bars nowadays anyway.

 

It's possible. But who knows. Like I said, my laptop would do the same thing on occasion. All I have to do is pop out the battery and pop it back in and voila. (Mainboard battery not battery pack)

If it is a fried mainboard, it'd probably be cheaper and more cost effective to just get a new laptop. Replacing parts in laptops is prohibitively expensive.

If it is the mainboard, then your data on the hard drive is fine. You just need to find a way to transfer it to a pc.

 

oh my...apparently the mainboard is fried.

859 Euros to fix it.


I doubt I will let it fixed. I can go on holiday for that kind of money.

 

LOL i have had this problem before with my laptop... this may sound really sad but... it wouldn't boot just lights would flash for a second. I finally check the battery and it was out so i checked the plug and that was fried so... check to see if they light is on on the plug ^^

 

Spurious, you aught to check Ebay, see if you can pickup a replacement laptop which fits your harddrives (then you can get your data back

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) and possibly for cheaper than 859 euros

 

that could be a good idea!

 

Sorry about the loss of your laptop. But, I can't help but wonder... might it have been a crooked shop? What happened to the laptop? Do you have it now? Don't give it away for god's sake. You should be aware of the cost of laptop components. Now that you have no reason to worry about screwing it up, go ahead and pop out the battery (Mainboard battery) and popping it back in. Just for shits and giggles. Never know, these guys could just be trying to get you for the price of a new mainboard for something simple. Sure as hell wouldn't be the first time such a thing has occurred.

How much does a new laptop run in Europe?


As an aside, my laptop hasn't required this battery reset trick in quite a while. You know why I think it might be? It happened again a few weeks back and the reset didn't work to fix it. I was somewhat worried that my board was fried. However, there are several diodes or something on top of the cpu in my laptop and between two of them was a glob of sauter. Like a sloppy day at the plant when the chip got cranked out. Now, I always wondered about this. There was just the barest of spaces between the sauter glob and the second diode (or whatever) and it seems to have grown smaller (the gap). Almost as if the heat this baby cranks out (Duron processor) was enough to allow the sauter to flow just a little bit over time. Well, since it wasn't starting at all, I took a screwdriver to the glob of sauter to remove it. Reset the board again. Presto. It fired up and hasn't required a reset since. It does freeze up on me on occasion. I really need to figure out why it's doing that. I have the feeling I may need to reinstall from the original recovery cd again. Which is a pain because it wipes out my second partition meaning that I'm going to have to transfer all my backup data to my pc to do this.

Anyway, fingers crossed I don't have to do the quick disassemble and reassemble anytime soon. It's such a pain. Even though I was getting quite good at it. 5-10 minutes tops.