Afternoon everyone. Got a mates laptop he gave to me for repair. Powers up, LED's come on - no screen. Plugged into external monitor through VGA and HDMI - nothing. Okay, faulty graphics chip. He ordered a "recon" motherboard from eBay to the tune of £95 which turned up the other day. I stripped it all down for him, installed the new M/B, put it back together and same problem. So I removed the battery, held the power button down, waiting a minute, let it go, waited another minute, stuck the mains charger in (minus the battery) and tried starting it. It started again - but no screen, no VGA/HDMI out. Ran a multimeter through the power brick and the battery, both fine. Tried booting it with RAM removed, no screen. Tried booting it with HDD removed, no screen. I can't see anything on the screen (so my guess is the backlight in the screen is fine) I don't have an inverter tester though, but my thoughts are that this "recon" motherboard is duff. Having said that, it's running Intel GMA X4500 graphics which is mounted to the motherboard, right? The CPU (dual core T4400) wouldn't be virtualizing the graphics as well would it? I only ask as I've NEVER seen a CPU fail that was @ stock speed (thermal cut-out kicks in way before damage). So - if anyone has any experience or any thoughts on the matter I would love to hear from you. Like I said, I have a feeling that this "recon" motherboard is duff, but I wanna be sure before I call him and tell him the bad news. The worst part is, it's his daughters laptop and she leaves for University tomorrow Edit: I forgot to mention I have the BIOS battery out of both motherboard at the moment, it's been about an hour and it's a long shot but I'm gonna try it again in a minute.
Have you tried alternate RAM modules? Also might be worth trying a different AC adapter . Like you said it's unlikely to be the LCD as you would still get video out on the external display. *** I just re-read and saw you tested the adapter***
I don't get any video from either VGA or HDMI. I tried booting with 1 RAM module, then swapping that for the other, then booting with no RAM - same results each time. The AC power brick is ok - I get the same results running off the battery, battery + mains and mains - battery. As insanely unlikely as it seems, it would appear that the replacement is dead (I checked with my mate and it was new apparently)
Turns out it was a combination of the motherboard dying and taking the RAM with it. New motherboard worked fine as soon as I junked in the memory from my laptop So old motherboard has gone out the window along with it's RAM and some spanking new memory is coming my way for this machine.
