In this post I’ll explain how to troubleshoot a dead laptop and find the problem. The following troubleshooting tips are not model and brand specific, they should work for most laptops.
Let’s take a look at two different scenarios.
Example 1. The laptop is absolutely dead.
When you plug in the power adapter and press on the power button, there is no signs of life at all. The laptop will not make usual noises, LEDs will not light up, the fan will not spin, the screen is blank and black, etc… In short, the laptop is dead.
What you can do in this case?
1. Make sure the wall outlet is working and the laptop DC adapter is getting power from the outlet. Try another wall outlet.
2. Test the laptop DC power adapter, make sure the voltage output is correct. You can test the DC power adapter with a voltmeter.
3. Let’s say the DC adapter is fine and the adapter outputs correct voltage. In this case unplug the power adapter from the laptop, remove the battery, wait for 1-2 minutes, plug in the adapter and try turning on the laptop again.
OK, you tested the adapter and it’s bad. If you decide to replace the original DC adapter with a generic one, you’ll have to follow this rule:
The voltage output on your new adapter has to be exactly the same as on the original adapter. The amperage on the new adapter could be the same or higher.
If nothing helps and the laptop is still dead, apparently the motherboard is fried or there is a problem with the DC power jack. It’s possible the DC power jack is broken and the motherboard is not getting any power from the adapter. In this case you’ll have to disassemble the laptop and replace the power jack. Check out this guide for fixing laptop power jack.
Example 2. When you plug the DC power adapter and press on the power button, the laptop starts making normal noises, the LEDs work properly but noting appears on the screen. The laptop will not start.
First of all, take a closer look at the LCD screen. Look at the screen under bright light. It’s possible that the image is still on the screen but it’s very faint. If that’s the case, check out these tips for troubleshooting laptop with backlight failure.
If there is no image on the laptop LCD screen, test the laptop with an external monitor. Connect an external monitor to the VGA port on your laptop and turn the laptop on. You can toggle video output between the internal LCD screen and external monitor by pressing Fn and F4 keys simultaneously on HP laptops, Fn and F5 keys on Toshiba laptops, Fn and F7 keys on IBM laptops. Other laptops may use different key combinations.
Let’s say the external monitor works fine but the internal LCD screen has no image at all. If that’s the case, your problem could be related to the LCD screen or the video cable. Also, make sure the video cable makes good connection with the motherboard and the LCD screen. Try reconnecting, reseating the cable.
In my case, both internal and external monitors were absolutely dead. Neither of them had image. That means the problem is not related to the LCD screen or the video cable. From my experience I know that this problem could be related to the laptop memory.
Try reseating the memory module, maybe it’s not making good connection with the memory slot. Try cleaning contacts on the memory module with pen eraser. Try moving the memory module into another slot. Try replacing the memory module with another known good module, it’s possible that your original module is dead.
If you have two memory modules installed you can try removing them one by one, it’s possible that one of the modules is bad. Try installing different memory modules into different memory slots.
In my case reseating, swapping the memory module didn’t help. I was pretty confident that my problem is not memory related and I moved on.
Try removing battery, hard drive and DVD drive and turning on the laptop without these components.
Also, try turning on the laptop with an external monitor when the video cable is unplugged from the motherboard. If the laptop start with video on the external monitor, apparently there is something wrong with the laptop display panel.
In my case removing the hard drive and DVD drive didn’t help. Unplugging the video cable didn’t help either.
I continued taking my laptop apart piece by piece and tested it after each step.
I removed wireless card, modem, disconnected the keyboard but it didn’t help.
I still wasn’t able to boot the laptop with video on the external monitor.
Finally, I disassembled the laptop and removed the motherboard.
On this picture you see my final test. The motherboard has been removed from the base and I assembled basic barebone system on my bench.
1. Motherboard. Like on most laptops, in my case the video card is integrated into the motherboard
2. CPU with heatsink and cooling fan.
3. Known good memory module.
4. The power button board witch I need to turn on the system.
5. Working DC power adapter.
Still cannot get any video on the external monitor. The system turns on, the cooling fan starts spinning but there is no video.
At this point I’m 95% sure that the motherboard is dead. CPU failures are not very common, so it must be bad motherboard.
July 3rd, 2009 at 2:52 am
I have a Toshiba Satellite SP10, on boot up it quickly showed the boot up screen then the screen went black. The small hard drive light and cd drive lights were flashing yet still no screen. I decided to format the maching using the manufacturers installation discs and all was going well, I could see the screen clearly and as the installation got to 25 percent the screen suddenly froze along with the cd light and hard drive light. It didnt respond to ctrl,alt.delete so I hit the power off button. When I have tried to turn it on since I it takes about 10 hits on the power button before it responds yet the screen still goes black and the machine seems to hang in limbo.
I realise the format wasnt completed but why would the whole machine just go to sleep like this. It had a new hard drive installed 12 months ago and showed no signs of illness before it fell into this coma,
Should I just take it off life support and throw it in the bin?
July 2nd, 2009 at 3:07 pm
I have a Toshiba Satelite A105-S4234 with, 1.5gig memory and a 250 G hdd…about 2.5 years old.
When I push the on button, the power light comes on, but that is it….does not access the hd, the hd inidcator light does not repsond at all when the on button is pressed….jsut sits there with a black screen….it will access or spin the cd/dvd drive if there is a disk in it.
I have searched invista site and elsewhere but have not found this particular problem listed or a fix….or exactly how to get to the hd to try and salvage the data if the computer is caput. Do you know where I might find instructions to remove hd on this particular computer?
THe last week before this total failure, I had a number of times the computer would be fine and suddenly a blue screen would flash and the computer would reboot before I could read it. The last 2 times it blue screened if I moved the computer physically. If I picked it up from the floor or desk it would also go blue screen and reboot.
Any suggestions welcome.
Thanks,
Galen
June 30th, 2009 at 1:49 am
I have a Toshiba A60 laptop that will not boot up. The Power and Battery LEDs come on but hard drive light is on only for a fraction of seconds . There is a black screen and the laptop does not boot up. Although i didn’t check it i am sure that the hard disc doesn’t fail.This all was acused when i tried to extend a ram while the batery is in the laptop and this might have disabled the original RAM which is integrated in the board .Is there any solution to enable the dead ram in the board? Any sugetion would be appreciated…
June 28th, 2009 at 10:32 pm
Jason,
Have you tried removing memory modules one by one? It’s possible that one of them is faulty.
June 28th, 2009 at 10:30 pm
Sjam,
I would really recommend using the right type of the power adapter. If the laptop requires 19 volts, you must use 19 volts. The amperage should be the same or higher.
June 28th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
This is the type of article I was looking for… Wanted to test a mobo outside the casing. This gives me visuals on how to do it. Thanks!
Just had a couple of questions on why a motherboard would fail and if the recent purchases of a battery / power supply would’ve caused its demise.
Recent purchases (the laptop was running fine, without any problems before I replaced). Two weeks later, I have these problems, and the laptop dies….
I replaced both the battery and the power supply. The power supply was 3.25A (this laptop needed a 4.5A p/s model) and 18.5 (this laptop needed a 19.0)
Here’s what mine did when I had it all assembled:
Turn on power, fan, lights come on, then after 5 seconds, it shuts right off. No POST, or ability to get into the cmos settings.
Took out the memory, and other easily removable externals. No change. So, I dismantled the entire laptop (an NX9420), thinking it’s probably the motherboard (wanted to test it out of the casing, and this article helps me out before I bought another board) getting fried by the underperforming power supply… Is the p/s the culprit, and why would it be so? Would it be the battery?
Or after 2.5 years, would a motherboard fail just like that?
Appreciate any input.
June 28th, 2009 at 7:38 am
Sorry I meant a Gateway M-6750
June 28th, 2009 at 7:24 am
I have a Gateway SA1 laptop and the LCD went black after I turned it off and back on again. I reseated the battery and it came back on. Stayed on and failed again after I powered it off. Now it wont turn on anymore…..DVD drive, HDD and all lights/fan are ok. I pulled memory, DVD, HDD, inverter and video cable from LCD…cant find video cable to laptop connector as it must be under the media panel…..any suggestions?
June 27th, 2009 at 11:04 pm
Syed,
I don’t remember this model off the top of my head. Is it normal for the battery LED flash on the startup? Did it flash before the laptop failed?
In IBM laptops the power button is a part of the keyboard. Maybe the power button is bad?
Can you remove the keyboard and try reconnecting the keyboard cable to the motherboard. Maybe the connection got oxidized and the keyboard cable is not making good connection with the motherboard. I would try reconnecting the keyboard cable first.
June 27th, 2009 at 10:25 pm
Emma McClarry,
Have you tried replacing the memory module with a known good module? By the way, very few laptops give you a beep error when there is no memory installed.