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.
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