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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October 13th, 2008 at 10:42 am
I just recently experienced this same problem. I removed the battery and it powered up fine using the AC only. Do I need to buy a new battery now? I am confused on where to go from here if I want to use the laptop without AC. Thanks
September 15th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
Rob,
Take a look at this thread:
Laptop is dead. How to troubleshoot the problem.
Try minimizing the laptop as much as you can. If the laptop still has the same problem when you have only major components connected (motherboard, CPU, known good memory), there could be a problem with the motherboard.
September 15th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Having the same problem with an HP Pavillion ze4600.
On turning laptopn on, it just turns itself on and off. Nothing appears on the screen. Can hear the fan startup, but thats it.ANy help, thanks
September 11th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
My Compaq presario F500 notebook is having a problem like this, It tries to turn on and hard disk tries to start, DVD tries to start and you can hear the fan spin sometimes, but after some seconds the PC shuts down itself and tries to re-start again and again and never starts, the screen is completely black.
I sent it to maintenance and I hope it´s fixed, I will tell you any news on this….
August 7th, 2008 at 4:11 am
Hi folks, I hope this solution might help someone out there. I have an HP Compaq NX5100. I took it in to the shop after it would power on for a few seconds, then die—no HP logo on the screen would appear. The computer serviceman said it ran for a day for him and tried powering it up with new RAM and a new hard drive, to no avail. His conclusion: needed a new motherboard for NZ$1,000!
My father, who is an electronic technician, believed the fault was actually a capacitor connected to the power supply and gave the repair a shot, and actually had it working for about five days.
My solution: take the battery out during start-up. I have done this now for five days and the laptop powers up every time. Dad’s conclusion after this info is that there is a short in the battery that prevents the remainder of the power-up sequence.
So, please do try just taking your battery out, then powering up your laptop. It really was that simple for me. Good luck!
July 26th, 2008 at 8:21 am
thanks a lot for sharing the info.
really helpful.
July 24th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Indi,
Enter the BIOS setup menu and left the laptop in there for a while. Do you still have the same problem when the laptop is in the BIOS setup menu or the problem appears only when it’s loading Windows?
July 24th, 2008 at 9:41 am
CJ2600
The problem you were talking about with samuel, i have the same one!
Do you have a solution for it?
July 9th, 2008 at 3:12 am
Dear friends,
I have Compaq Presario V3000,
Problem: when i press power button, power indicator was sucessfully but screen doesn’t show any thing. laptop goes on untill battry will empty.
This problem happened on same laptop before 2 month. that time I given in service center. they told out of warrenty, and you need to replace your mother board to solve this problem. they given 15000/- repairing quotation for me.
after that I get my laptop and came to home.
that time I press power button. but problem still in laptop due to mother board problem. but one time I was started my laptop without battery. that laptop gose on sucessfully.
I shocked. they given me wrong quotation.
but right now I’m facing same problem, but previous trick couldn’t work.
SEND ME YOUR SUGESSION @
wordbox5@gmail.com
Thanks,
June 26th, 2008 at 2:51 am
Hi, I have exactly the same problem mentioned at the top except that the laptop is HP Compa nc6000.