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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September 21st, 2006 at 10:01 am
James,
It might be just an overheating issue. I would check if the heatsink is clean. You can check the heatsink if you lift up the keyboard. When you turn on the laptop, the fan should start spinning. You also can access and check the fan if you lift up the keyboard. Here’s a list of IMB laptop manuals, find your model and go to the keyboard removal instructions.
September 21st, 2006 at 9:20 am
Gilly,
If you didn’t, find the original recovery media (CD or DVD disk), boot the laptop from it and follow the wizard.
When you see “no bootable hard drive found” during laptop start up, it usually means that the HDD is dead or it’s empty and an operating system is not found. It also might happen because of a bad HDD controller on the system board, but it’s not common. If the hard drive is dead, then you’ll have to replace the HDD and reload the operating system from a recovery CD or DVD. I don’t know what level of computer knowledge you have and I have to ask a simple question. Did you reload the operating system after you replaced the hard drive?
Here are some troubleshooting tips.
First of all, I would check if the new HDD is detected and listed in the BIOS. Enter the BIOS setup menu and see if you can see the hard drive in there. If you can see the HDD listed in the BIOS, it’s detected properly and probably you have a software issue. I don’t remember the key that you have to press for Setup on Dell laptops; usually it’s Esc, F1, or F2. On some models you can see this key under the Dell logo witch appears as soon as you turn on the laptop. Try them. You can also can test the HDD with Hitachi drive fitness test, if the test passes successfully, I would assume that the system board and the HDD are fine. Let me know how it goes.
September 21st, 2006 at 9:20 am
What a great site! I have a thinkpad a21m. It boots up fine, runs for 15 minutes and then shuts down, all the LED lights start flashing and it tries to reboot, gets to the thinkpad splash screen, shuts down and tries to reboot repeatedly until I hold the power button down for a few secs to shut it off. If I wait 10 minutes or so it’ll start up and run fine for another 15 minuts and repeat the same cycle. I just bought it used 2 weeks ago and it worked fine for a week. I installed a new hard drive thinking that would help but I still have the same problem.
It did stay up long enough for me to install windows XP (I had it sitting on a vented plastic rack with a fan blowing on it) but then started doing the same thing. Do you think I have a bad fan? I’ve installed all the ibm management utilities. I’m really at a lost. Thanks for any direction you can point me in.
James
September 21st, 2006 at 5:01 am
I have a Dell Inspiron something or other laptop (i think i paid over $1800 for) which shortly after the warranty ran out I started having problems with. when you turn it on it says no bootable hard drive found….Dell did its troubleshooting and said …I need a new hard drive…….$80 dollars later that didnt help either…now I had to resort back to an old gateway desktop that is slower than hell….I also have a Dell desktop that doesn’t work…..very frustrated……I will be forever greatful if you could help me….
Heard about you on the Howard Stern show
September 10th, 2006 at 10:45 pm
Vish,
Do you hear any other laptop activity: the fan start spinning, the harddrive makes some noise or the DVD drive LED light starts flashing?
I would try to reseat the memory module. Remove the memory and insert it back, try to move it into another slot. If you have 2 memory modules installed, remove them one by one and test the laptop after each removed module. It easily could be just a failed memory.
September 10th, 2006 at 5:27 pm
I have a Thinkpad G41 …….It is not starting at all …..when i push the power on button ……nothing happens …just the power LED glows ..thats it …nothing displays ……the cap locks led also doesnt displays ………if u happen to know anythinh about this pls let me know
September 10th, 2006 at 5:14 pm
I have the exact and I mean the exact same problem. I have been having issues with my video display so I am certain that is what is causing my laptop to shutdown. Thanks for the suggestion.
September 4th, 2006 at 4:09 pm
Hello, I just wanted to say thank you to whoever left the article as I look like the bomb after reading this and repairing it for a friend worked awesome and yes took some time but it also made the “Experts” look like smo’s when the stated power switch,battery, and even mother board. I honestly sitched out every switch out quick component hard drive memory you name this artice and this site saved me.. God Bless & Thank You!!
September 3rd, 2006 at 9:53 am
Thank you for getting back to me, I will give those a shot. I’m not a big Compaq fan, but I bought it cheap, and I use it when I deploy. It has I think 2 512 chips in it, maybe one is failing, I’m not sure I’ve pulled them out before and put them back in because I noticed that I was only ready like 480 ram. Then it came back and said 9 hundred whatever after I did that. The computer actually turned back on right after I went out from writing your email yesterday first try like nothing was wrong. So I’m pretty lost. I don’t mind so much it being a pita to turn on because I can always leave it on, but sometimes I take it to work and then I get shafted like yesterday. Thanks for your help.
September 2nd, 2006 at 11:33 pm
Billy,
Try to reseat the memory module first. You can also try moving it to the second slot. If you can find any test memory, install it instead of your module and test if it makes any difference. From your description I cannot give you a better advice; it could be anything from a loose connection to a bad hardware.
I would also try to minimize the system, remove modules (hard drive, DVD drive, wireless card, any other cards) one by one and try to turn it on after each removed part.