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.
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June 25th, 2009 at 7:38 pm
I have a Toshiba Protege R100 laptop that will not boot up. The Power and Battery LEDs come on but no hard drive light and the hard drive does not spin up. There is a black screen and the laptop does not boot up. I have checked the hard drive in another R100 and it works fine. I have removed the battery and the memory but the laptop still will not boot, no beeps either. Any help would be appreciated….Thanks
June 24th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
Hi All,
I need your help….Please…
I have an IBM Thinkpad R51……..It’s a 4 years old laptop and is dead right now…….The situation is somewhat similar to the “1st case” described above..The only difference is, when i connect the power cord the battery LED flashes for 3 seconds and then stays on……however, pressing the power ON button does nothing……..absolutely dead….
The battery was dead from 6 months and i running it on power supply…….with the battery in the laptop…..when i pull the power cable out, the laptop used to turn OFF immediately….
last week, it didn’t power ON even when the power cable was connected….i ordered a new battery – no use…….i removed the battery and tried connecting the power cable and starting the laptop – no use…….i removed HDD, CDD, RAM and tried starting – no use……….
it cannot be the DC power jack, as the battery glows when the power cable is connected…..
could you please help me out???? thanks in advance..
Syed.
June 15th, 2009 at 4:20 am
i have got a compaq armada e 500 .i want to install windows operating system but it doesnt want to boot from cd and install the operating system. it keeps telling me… no disk or non disk error please help me solve the problem
June 7th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
rod,
That sounds like a problem with the motherboard to me. Also, it’s possible that one of the memory slots is bad. Try removing memory modules one by one and start the laptop with each module separately. Can you start the laptop with only one memory module installed?
June 4th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
I have a toshiba satellite m65 that has been having touch pad, cursor, and mouse problems. My usb ports starting shutting down when using a wireless mouse, then computer started freezing up when working hard (several windows open with video running). Downward pressure on the keyboard worked for a while to unfreeze the laptop, but progressively getting worse. It turns on now and fan runs for a couple of seconds, but will not boot up. Any suggestions?
June 4th, 2009 at 2:07 am
Hi,
I have a Thinkpad T42. One year ago it started frequent blue screen and reboots whenever it was tightly touched. I figured out that the problem was with the heat sink being too much tightly fastened on the CPU (I had fasten that myself once when cleaning the fan).
When I made the heat sink a little bit looser, it went OK.
Now after one year I am facing similar kind of problem. The laptop doesn’t start sometimes; it doesn’t even bring up the IBM logo. In cases when it successfully boots up, it is always possible that it stop working at any moment. It may happen sooner or later between 1 min to hours after boot.
When the laptop stops working, kind of noise is seen on the LCD as if there is a mobile phone beside a monitor. And when I push the heat sink, the noise disappears but the laptop stays freeze and I have to turn it off and on again.
I have removed RAM, HDD, DVD but still the problem exists.
Could you help me out of the problem please?
Sobhan
May 27th, 2009 at 11:27 am
Have u considered installing a new BIOS chip. It might have been infected by a virus. Saying that though the motherboard was probably fried. U should also take out the CPU, see if there are burn marks which would indicate it was fried. It could also be the onboard graphics card. If any of you can’t get a screen on ur desktop PC, I think u should try using the CMOS jumper. It sometimes works. Also blow the dust out of memory slots and all slots.
May 26th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
I have a Dell Inspiron 3000.
When I plug in the power adapter the green light comes on
for 1 sec. The display flashes with all symbols a few times
then nothing. No screen activity at all or cpu, fan.
If I take out the battery and same results then what /
Help
May 24th, 2009 at 10:43 am
I would like to thank cj2600 who changed everything for me!! I’ve been trying to get at the bottom of my laptop situation for days. I’d been to the hp website, checked all sorts of forums and how-to pages – and could NOT figure out why the laptop was dead(ish). I’ve reseated the memory, cleared the capacitor, investigated under every screw-on cover. Just yesterday I was prying off the upper faceplate to look at the screen connections.
It took me a few days to get through this huge page, but when I finally got to this message it was like EUKEKA! I checked the warranty, called HP and they are sending a box to pick up my bad laptop. AND, evidently the warranty period for me is ending in one week!!
what’s crazy is that I was on the HP tech support page for this laptop and did not see anything about this problem or warranty “enhancement”.
so thank you cj – and thank you Laptop Repair Guy – you saved me hundreds of dollars and some valuable pieces of my sanity!!
ellen
ps – here’s cj’s original post…
cj2600 Says:
December 14th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
Red,
“HP dv 6000 series. Less than two years old. is Hardly moved and never bossed around.
A few months ago, when booting the LED button comes on and it starts making noises looking to start up but doesnt, When forced shut down (Pressing and holding Led button) and trying again it starts normally. Kept happening all the time.”
Did you hear about HP Limited Warranty Service Enhancement program? I think your laptop is in the list and you can get a free repair. Try calling HP about your problem. Let me know what happens.
May 18th, 2009 at 9:28 am
Karen Merchant,
First thing to do – check the memory. Try reconnecting memory modules. Do you have two memory modules installed? Try removing them one by one. Test the laptop with each memory module separately. Will it start when only one module is installed?