Notebooks What's wrong with my laptop? Fixed- GPU Baked.

It died the other night. If I try to boot it up now, the hard drive light appears to flash, there's no bleeps or anything, the screen stays black and eventually it becomes a mass of vertical stripes with a wider black vertical band just right of centre.

Any ideas? GPU, CPU, screen, motherboard?

The hard drive works in my desktop docking station.
I tried hooking it up to my tv via hdmi, but couldn't get anything. (don't know if there's a menu I need to access to approve it though)


The laptop is an Aspire 5920WSMi. I know it's a few years old but if it can be fixed relatively cheap it will do as it's basically a surfing, word processor for the wife.

 

Try starting with one stick of mem or swapping them around.

Sadly if that doesn't spark it into life with already investigated the HD its prob the mobo.

 

Forgot to add I tried that and it made no difference.

 

Its the motherboard.

 

Can you get it into BIOS ?

Or can you get it to boot from DVD drive ?

 

Can't get nowhere as the display stays black then eventually shows loads of vertical stripes.

Can't hear any beeps, windows tunes or anything.

Could a duff graphics card cause this or is the motherboard more likely?

 

Is it an Nvidia graphics card?

 

have you tried an external monitor on vga not hdmi, that could rule out a gpu problem

there are a few things, screen could be faulty, cable that feeds screen could be damaged, gpu migt need reballing, especially if its an nvidia one

 

If it's old, give it a good clearout as it could be a build up of dust that's causing it to overheat. Is the fan spinning? Try unplugging the power, taking battery out and hold the power button for 30 seconds, then power it up again. It might be it needs some replacement tim on the heatsink. It could be a loose monitor cable (the one that feeds through the hinge) that simply needs securing again.

 

the virticle lines thing says something is prob wrong hardware wise.

its prob going to need a new motherboard.

 

Is the HDD turning over, is it whirring, and is there a small LED flickering on/off indicating HDD activity ?

Good call on the external screen / monitor - try that

 

HDD light appears to be flickering.
Just tried a vga cable and there appears to be no output.
It does have a Nvidia graphics card.
What's reballing?

 

its the replacement of the solder balls that connect the chip to the board

nvidia chips get hot, the solder melts, the soft heat transfer pad compresses, and the chip pops free from a few solder joints

 

Is that what baking in the over can fix?

Although I'm guessing if the vga and hdmi don't produce an output on an external monitor, then the graphics card is probably OK and it's more likely the motherboard?

 

yes baking can temporarily fix the problem.

if no output on anything it is more than likely the chip has popped off, if one of the outputs was working properly, more likely to be a board issue

 

So you think the graphics card is likely the cultprit?

 

i do

 

If it has a Nvidia graphics card they have a stupidly high failure rate in laptops of a similar age.

IMO a largely pointless complication because most dedicated chipsets are not needed or ever used ( and if are needed are too slow to play games anyway!)

Could bake it but there is no grantee it would sort it. Its prob best to be sold as spares. New laptops are so cheap and so fast now. I3 laptops are under £300 for example.

 

me too.


from the specs it's an NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT

I saw a laptop with this exact issue recently.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_8_Series#GeForce_8M_Series

the only option is something like this service http://www.electronicservices-derby.co.uk/reflowing-and-reballing unfortunately unless you fancy baking it yourself and of course that may kill it entirely or not work, or if it does, how knows how long it will last?

 

Just need to wait for the wife to get up and try logging on to her laptop now as I don't have her password.
Baked the gpu for 8mins at gas mark 6 and the laptop seems to be working again now. Just have to see how long it lasts.