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 7th, 2006 at 1:06 am
I’m posting again, i posted earlier on page 2. My compaq has officially died. Like i stated before, It turns on for maybe 2-3 seconds, then shuts off. Before every so often it would turn on, and run fine for as long as i left it turned on. It did seem a little sluggish sometimes though. It’s a compaq 2ghz, 1 gig of ram. Last night i took the thing apart as far as i could figure out. i took both ram chips out, swapped tried each separte, no help. I pulled the LCD completely out of the computer, and disconnected and reconnected every connector i saw hoping for a stroke of luck. Still the same symptom. I dropped my computer off to be configured for our network, and they told me my NIC card wasn’t reading correctly, so i bought an external usb one to try, but never made it that far yet. I have had an issue with using my Wireless NIC, it would freeze while trying to install software for it ( this was before the current problem) i’m just throwing out there everything i can think of. I’m not sure what else to try. i had the hard drive out, the battery out, and tried it with the battery out. I couldn’t get the main part of the laptop in half, i didn’t want to break it, though i did feel like bashing it many times. Basically i’m writing because i’m deployed in the desert and i’ve got nothing else to passt he time besides this laptop on occasions so if i can rig this thing or fix it somehow, that would be great. I just need it to last for another two months. Thanks for the help. I appreciate any ideas and replacement ideas for the laptop, or parts.
October 5th, 2006 at 9:03 am
Paul,
I don’t think that you can attach the broken nut with a regular solder. I’m not familiar with Alienware laptops. Toshiba laptops have nuts glued into a hole on the motherboard, I guess Alienware uses the same technique, not sure though.
If you can easily access the video card under the keyboard, you can try this. Lift up the keyboard, press on the video card so it makes a better connection and turn on the laptop while you are still pressing on the card. Does it make any difference?
October 4th, 2006 at 1:08 am
Cheers cj, really appreciate it, will be sure to try all of your ideas. If I take my latop to an internet cafe I can chekily book a private booth and hook it up to their monitor to see if that works, and then try out everything else you said.
If I understand correctly your saying that by detaching the display assembly by just taking the video cable out of the motherboard and then attaching an external monitor I will thus determine whether the problem involves the display or not.
however the plot thickens, I noticed a couple of days ago when I removed the video card that one of the 4 nuts that the video card assembly screws into has broken off the motherboard. Basically their are two connecting strips for the video card on the board with 2 screws each, one at either end. The screws hold the video card and fan to the board connectors. thus one of the nuts not being there means the card is not firmly attached to one end of one of the board connections.
So before I do anything else I think I should solder the nut back onto the board (I found it down the side of the board), since this seems the most likely problem, if this dosn’t fix it then I can stat trying everything else.
Should I be concerned about damaging the board if I start soldering? Presumably if I use as little as possible and apply it very carefully the the nut it should be fine. Can you think of any obvious things I should be minful of etc. Also, to connect it tightly I probably need to somehow remove the solder still attached to the board, since it is preventing a snug fit. Not entirely sure how to go about this.
I’m also concerned that I have broken this nut of once I started messing with the laptop! and so the reason it is not turning on is something else, which would make me an idiot. Nontheless i think there’s little point doing anything else till this is fixed, process of elimination and all…
thanks again
September 30th, 2006 at 10:13 am
Hey Paul,
You did a very good job troubleshooting your laptop. Here’s what I think:
You might have a failing video card or a bad connection between the video card and the motherboard. Disconnect the video cable from the video card (or system board) and start the laptop with an external monitor attached to it. This test will eliminate the entire display assembly (screen and video cable). If you can get video on the external monitor when the laptop screen is disconnected from the video card (system board), then most likely the problem is somewhere inside the laptop display assembly.
I do not have a straight answer to this question. It depends. You might get a gargled video output, a video with some strange characters all over the screen, or no video at all.
I believe that if you start the laptop without the video card attached to the motherboard, you will not get any video at all, even a basic one.
I don’t know how comfortable you are with taking the laptop apart. When I get a laptop like yours for repair, I usually take it apart completely and minimize to a bare minimum.
System board, video card (if it’s a separate module), memory, CPU (with cooling module) – that’s all you need to start the laptop with a basic video on an external monitor. If I can boot it with video, I start adding parts and test it after each step. If I still cannot boot the system, I start replacing parts starting with memory and CPU. Unfortunately, it’s very hard to troubleshoot a laptop without any test parts.
Make sure that your memory sticks are good. I understand that it’s very unlikely that both memory modules fail at the same time, but anyway. Reseat them again. Move each module into different slots on the motherboard, make sure that you test any possible combination (module 1-slot 1, module 1 – slot 2, module 2 – slot 1, module 2 – slot 2).
Also reseat any cable and connector you can find and access.
Make sure that the AC adapter is good. Remove the battery and try starting the laptop just on AC power, without the battery installed.
Good luck!
September 30th, 2006 at 3:54 am
Ok, this issue sounds exactly like the one I’m having.
I have an Alienware Aurora M770 (supposedly reliable top of the range stuff) Bought it second hand from ebay but it was brand new when the guy sold it to me (he needed his money back) and has been working fine for about 4 months.
What happens. I press power on, Power related LED’s come on, LED clock comes on the front, fan’s have spun sometimes as well.
The hard drive LED shows for about 1-2 seconds and the DVD drive spins briefly, then it all clicks off except for the LED’s and tries again, trying to boot every few seconds. Nothing at all comes out of the speakers or on the monitor.
Now presumably if it was the graphics card, something would come on screen nontheless via the motherboard. If it was the hard drive, then the screen would come on and say hard drive not found, if it was the power supply my fans and LED’s would not stay on.
I have swapped 2 RAM sticks over, and tried to start it with just each one in. I have started it without the hard drive, without the graphics card, and without the DVD drive, just in case one of these were faulty and were causing a boot malfunction. Same thing happens every time.
So I thought it must be a processor issue. Till I read this original post and thought perhaps the screen is not being detected and therefore causing a boot problem. So I tried tried booting with an external monitor, no luck. I then took the LCD display apart (which was really scary!) but could not find any faults in the connections. I did not pull the tape from the back of the LCD screen itself where the wire connects since I did not feel comfortably with that and thought it might break the connection permanently if I started messing with it.
Any thoughts? Also if the graphics card was not detected becuase it was either broke or because the connection was bad where the actual card was, would the system still boot with some basic motherboard visuals, or just not start at all?
In addition the system was bought in UK, and this has happened in Japan where I now live (which makes it far more difficult to get it fixed! However my transformer power pack specifically says 100 to 250 volts is acceptable, the voltage here being 110. And it has worked fine for 2-3 weeks until this happened anyway.
One other thing, my first idea was to reseat some of the componants a few days ago, ad when I reseated my graphics card the system did boot and worked fine for about 15 minutes, then the screen and system froze and kept flicking between the fully lit up screen and what appeared to be a screen without a backlight (ie a very faded out dark image that nontheless displayed the same windows screens I had up). It was stuck like this for a while so I just turned it off, and it hasn’t come back on since, even after me playing with the graphics card a few times to try and make this happen again.
This makes me think it must be a problem with visual hardware not being detected, ie graphics card or screen, since if it has come on a worked perfectly since the first time this happened then all other componants like processor/RAM/hard drive etc. must be working fine and there is simply a poor connection in the visual hardware preventing it from booting.
Is this sound reasoning?
I’m stuck for ideas now and don’t want to give it to a japanese person I can’t understand and pay him 10,000 Yen to tell me its a loose wire somewhere! so any ideas very much appreciated.
Sorry for the length of this post but thought it best to get as much info as possible in at first
thanks for any help you can give!!!!
September 28th, 2006 at 12:36 am
Hi.
I have exactly the same problem on my toshiba A60 after removing the onboard RAM chips. They were dead, and that was told me by memtest86. Instead of replacing the motherboard, I was adviced to remove the chips and put memory in the external socket, by a user with the same problem.. now fixed. I did it carefully without damage in the board circuits, and now, the after pluging new RAM in the socket behind the board, the laptop boots for 2-3 seconds and then shuts down. How can I ckeck out whats happening? Anyone can help?
September 21st, 2006 at 10:03 pm
cj2600,
Thanks for the tip(s).
I’ll try that when I reinstall the new fan.
James
September 21st, 2006 at 9:01 pm
James,
I think the keyboard cable is long enough and it’s not necessary to put the keyboard back in the laptop base during the test. When I have to test the fan on IBM laptop, I connect the keyboard cable to the system board and place the keyboard on the palmrest. After that I can start the laptop from the keyboard and still have and access to the cooling fan.
September 21st, 2006 at 8:52 pm
I believe you helped me find the problem.
The fan wasn’t blowing!
For 15 minutes or so the computer would run fine but no fan.
When the computer shut down and tried to boot back up,
I put my hand back there and felt the fan trying to start. Warm puffs of air but not engaging. I took it apart and pulled the fan. Not much dust and it spun freely with me blowing on it.
I slapped it back together hoping it was a loose Molex connector that was the problem and made sure the connectors where solid.
But alas, the fan continues to not run and the laptop shuts down after 15 or so minutes.
I am heartened by this because now I can replace the fan and (if it is the fan and not a wire
going to the fan) hopefully be in good shape.
This is an IBM thinkpad a21m laptop that I have and the power button is on the keyboard so I had to put it all back together before I could start it and test the fan again
Does anyone know of a way I can start it without the keyboard in place?
Thanks again,
James
September 21st, 2006 at 1:40 pm
cj2600
Thank you for your reply.
I’ll check that out and post a reply here as to my results.
James