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My in-laws laptop is dying a slow death. I have my wife's old T40 that powers on but won't POST. At the time we replaced it video was flaky. It has just sat till now. With a desktop, I'd pull all non-essential hardware and see if I could at least get it to boot. The laptop there isn't much I can do I don't think. Any other tricks to try?
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David
The chief cause of failure in this life is giving up what you want most for what you want at the moment. -
Try it with the battery removed and just the A/C plugged in... Does anything happen when you power it on? Anything on the screen, activity lights, beeps? Can you see the backlight come on? Can you remove the HDD and memory modules easily? How about the BIOS battery? -
honestly in laptops, once it starts to flake out, chances are good that you have an unrecoverable situation
These little buggers have some many internal connections between boards that the repeated heating and cooling works those connections loose, either at the joint, or in the leads going to the connector, shorting out, or breaking completely,
My old sand-box laptop will no longer install windows, and for the most part is so unreliable that I am half tempted to run over it with my lawnmower for something fun to post on youtube
T40's are tough, make sure you have a sharp mower blade...It's Like I've always said, it's amazing what an agnostic can't do if he dosent know whether he believes in anything or not
Monty Python's Flying Circus
Dan in Harrisburg, NCComment
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Wow. Well dang. Good call on the battery. I pulled it out and it started to boot normally. It is running right now. I will put it through it's paces without the battery and see how well it does. It never would have occurred to me that it was the battery. My troubleshooting skills on the small systems like this are basically defunct.
Thanks. You saved me a bunch of time and frustration. I wish it had occurred to me to try that the last go-round. I spent a lot of time on it before we replaced it.
Last edited by crokett; 06-30-2009, 07:21 PM.David
The chief cause of failure in this life is giving up what you want most for what you want at the moment.Comment
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That's great, I had a Gateway that just needed some contact cleaner and the battery reseated about a week ago.
My experience is it's either real simple or it's a lost cause. I've talked about my terminal client laptop recently... It's a 15.4" P3-900 Toshiba, my son shattered the screen on my 650 Celeron a while back so I fonund 2 that were parting out on ebay. By the time I finished I had two complete 2905's and kept the faster one. One of the laptops worked fine once I pulled swapped battery and was in great condition. For $50 shipped I was happy as I don't need the speed.
One last thing to check. See if there is a battery calibration tool in the BIOS. You might be able to make the battery last a bit longer, worst case it will confirm that it's hosed.Comment
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