Today I was able to fix a “dead” notebook simply by reseating connectors. The customer brought in Compaq nx5000 notebook with the following complaint:
“Laptop shuts down on power up. When the power button is pushed, the laptop flashes green lights for several seconds and then powers down. Unit will not stay on with battery or when plugged in”.
I plugged the AC adapter and tried to turn on the laptop. After I pushed on the power button, fans started spinning and were active for a few seconds and laptop just turned itself off. The video never came on. I tried to power it on for a few times with the same result.
Here is how I fixed it.
First of all I tried simple stuff: remove the battery and start the laptop with AC adapter plugged in, reseat and swap the memory module, remove the hard drive, the DVD drive, the wireless card. Nothing helped to start the laptop normally. After that I went a little bit further. I opened up the laptop case, removed the LCD screen assembly and reseated the video card and… Surprise, surprise, the laptop started fine with an external monitor attached. Just in case I restarted it 3-4 times and each time I got video on the screen. After I assembled everything back, one more surprise was waiting for me. The laptop failed to boot again with the same symptoms. So, the only part that I added before it failed was the LCD screen assembly. I unplugged the video cable from the system board and the laptop started fine again with the external monitor. Now I know that the problem is somewhere inside the display assembly (of course, if the video connector on the system board is fine). The next logical step would be opening up the LCD display assembly and check if all connectors are seated properly. Bingo!!! I wasn’t very surprised, but I was very happy. The video cable was half-way out from the connector on the back of the LCD screen. The laptop started perfectly fine as soon as I plugged the video cable back in place. Fixed!
That was my first experience when improperly plugged video cable prevented entire system from booting.
Read more:
How to troubleshoot and fix laptop video problems
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November 19th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
Thanks. Had the exact symptons. Played with the video connection and it is working again. For how long remains to be seen.
Thanks again!
October 17th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
I have a Gateway M350 notebook the problem is cannot use AC
ADAPTER so start on the other hand i can start it with battery
Is this mahine ia battery dependent one or something wrong
please give me some sort of help would be appreciated.
September 20th, 2009 at 7:58 pm
Tricia,
I don’t think that your problem is related to the screen. Sounds more like a power related problem.
It’s possible that you have a failed AC adapter and the battery doesn’t have enough charge to start the laptop.
Can you test the laptop with another AC adapter. That would be the first thing to try.
September 19th, 2009 at 5:00 am
I need help on mine please, when i hit the power button the lights flash then it powers down, it wont turn on, i had it up and running then it just shuts off now i cant get it back on, I have a Dell 8600. Is it the screen? what do i do. someone help email me at tricia_b12@yahoo.com
August 20th, 2009 at 10:22 am
Hi all nice post and i only just tried opening everything up reseating and making it all tight and snug (literally 5 minutes before i read your post), and it didn’t work. I have the same laptop model, and the same symptoms but i cannot use it with an external monitor, and i cant even use my laptop screen as a display my unit wont charge itself either, it will charge with the orange light on, and then turn off straight away. Any more help? Or ideas? This used to be a work laptop, so i went through some tough times, but all of these problems just recently happened, with no cause, i didn’t shake it or drop it or anything, so it leads me to wonder what’s wrong.
p.s. i have triple checked, and everything is fully plugged in.
July 29th, 2009 at 11:31 pm
Hi everybody! I have the almost same problem, yet almost! I have a HP Omnibook 6100 and when I plug the AC adapter the battery led is orange(charging), and when I switch power on, the led is switching off. My battery is dead, but it worked before without it since I used it only connected with AC adaptor, at home. Can you give me some hints ?
Thanks, Florin
July 26th, 2009 at 1:41 am
Hi, i’ve got a hp compaq nc6000 and have exactly the same symptoms as John on post 146, except i found that if i bashed the bottom a little bit it would work perfectly again but if i move it or jolt it and breaks down again. This leads me to beleive that something may be loose inside?
Thanks, Chris
June 10th, 2009 at 8:01 pm
I have an NX9420. I bought it new, about 2 years ago. I recently replaced both the battery and power supply (I’m on my third one), both about 1 month ago. The p/s seemed a little light for this machine but it “supposedly” is supposed to work with the unit.
Recently (last day or so, some funny things have been happening at startup, including the startup-5 seconds-shutdown with no video screen at all). Now, this morning, that’s all I get, though, I got the hp logo once. I have tried starting it with only the p/s, battery to no avail. have reseated the hard drive, and about ready to reseed the memory and see if any of this has an effect.
Someone told me that there’s been a lot of issues with included wifi internal card, causing this behavior, but would it just all the sudden surface after 2.5 years of ownership?
June 4th, 2009 at 11:49 am
My son has a IBM Thinkpad T41. Unfortunately, he knocked it to the ground a few days ago, about a distance of 12 inches. Now when we turn it on the screen is slightly black with a strip of blue at the top and the lights flash and go out…I can hear the fan, but it sounds weak, like it is struggling to power up. After a few days we tried it again and everything booted up fine. It then worked for about 10mins then shutdown but the fan continued to work but humming noise was coming and going (very difficult to explain). When I try to start it up, again I get the black screen with blue stripe. Could the fan be damaged? Causing it to overheat, hence it shutting down? HELP! Thanks in advance for any advice.
May 20th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
Hi, I have an HP6000 that won’t start. When I press the power button, the fan starts, the blue ‘wireless turned on’ light comes on, followed by the ‘charging’ lamp (psu plugged in or on battery) then it all shuts down after a second or two, nothing on the screen. I’ts twice tried to start normally with the screen active but then it just cuts dead, but with the cpu fan still running.
I had been using it and it all just went off, no shut down or anything, it just went off. I was running on slow cpu mode, and nothing was hot at the back so I know its not a heat related issue.
Any ideas what up?
Cheers! Clivey
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