Confirm motherboard diagnosis?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bob Newman
  • Start date Start date
B

Bob Newman

I am a novice with a 1 1/2 year old Compaq F730US laptop that has been
diagnosed with a dead motherboard. Is there any way I can confirm this
diagnosis myself before I buy a new laptop? I am not confident of local
repair shops and estimates get costly fast.

Thanks in advance... Bob
 
philo said:
Is the machine 100% dead?
Click to expand...

Here is the history of the problem. At 1st the computer would lock up and
have to be rebooted, it did this more and more frequently. Then when it
tried to reboot it could not do so, the screen was completely blank. You
could tell that the computer was trying to boot by looking at the drive
lights. 1st the HD light would go on and then the light in the DVD drive
would go on as it does during a boot up, it would keep cycling like that as
if it was trying to boot even though the screen was blank. Now it does not
even do that. The screen is still blanks, the HD & DVD lights do not light
up. You can tell that the computer is turned on only by the power light...
that I the only indication of life at this time.

Bob
 
Bob said:
I am a novice with a 1 1/2 year old Compaq F730US laptop that has been
diagnosed with a dead motherboard. Is there any way I can confirm this
diagnosis myself before I buy a new laptop? I am not confident of local
repair shops and estimates get costly fast.
Click to expand...

If you bought it with an American Express or Gold or Platinum Visa or
Mastercard, it may still be covered by the card issuer's free extended
warranty that doubles the manufacturer's standard warranty by up to
another year. Amex and Visa are pretty good about honoring this
coverage, but MC may require some effort. They told a friend of mine
to spend $100 for a "professional" diagnosis on a bad hard drive that
would cost less than that to replace and refused to reimburse him for
that, but they finally agreed to refund the original charge if the HD
was shipped to them.

Have you tried an external monitor with the laptop, to see if the
laptop does anything at all? Anything displayed could be useful for
diagnosis. Also have you tried a different power pack? Don't buy one
but borrow one, even if it's for a different brand computer, because
it's the voltage and plug polarity that really matter, and I've used a
Dell power pack on a Toshiba laptop)? If a different power pack
doesn't help, then the power socket on the motherboard may be bad or,
more likely, have come unsoldered (easy to fix, but few computer
repair shops can do it competently).

There are places like www.LaptopRepair101.com, www.NotebookReview.com,
and www.FixYa.com have information about repairing laptops.

Any repair shop should have a 100% clean record with the Better
Business Bureau, accepts credit cards, and is a factory authorized
repair center for Compaq/HP. Also avoid shops where employees say "no
problem" or sound pretentious because those are signs of incompetence
and dishonesty.
 
Back
Top