help with dead laptop

[Maxheadroom]

my apologies if this is in the wrong area
my acer 4230 seems to have died, it was working fine then today it wont start up, i get no post beep at all, the fan comes on for about 20 seconds then stops and the lights on the lappy stay on but nothing shows on the screen.
also if i take the HDD out it does the same thing.
is there anything i can do to it? i have another acer travelmate somewhere that got sat on i think the screens bust and i think theres something wrong with the keyboard but i might be able to salvage some parts.
thanks

 

[Kirsch]

1. Unplug the power
2. Take the battery out
3. Hold the power button for 30 seconds
4. Plug back in the power cord and try booting

 

[Petey7]

I'm not sure if the parts from the two would be compatible. Also, usually something happening to the keyboard effects the rest of the computer on a laptop. If you can connect the acer travelmate to an external moniter you can see if that computer is salvageable or not. Whats the model number on the travelmate?

I've gotta say this is my least favorite thing to say to somebody. It looks like the mobo on the acer 4230 has failed. Those are symptoms I have rarely seen on a salvageable laptop. I'm not sure how old it is, but I'm guessing if you still had the warranty on it, you would have contacted acer first. I decided to see if your were selling any acer 4230s on ebay for parts, and I found a motherboard for $130 (£84). Looking on line you might find something, or I can check to see if the two mobos on the two computers are the same.

 

[Maxheadroom]

thanks Kirsch but that had no effect mate

petey7 yes it does sound like a dead mobo, the other travelmmate is the 4500, it dosent start up properly and i cant get into boot options or anything cause the keyboard dosent work properly, the screen is broken but you can still see most of it, is there a poss of a mobo swap do you think?

 

[Petey7]

When I found that one mobo on ebay, it listed multiple model numbers, but I'll have to check. You might be able to get the 4500 working if it had a decent screen and working keyboard.

 

[Petey7]

It looks like the 4230 and 4530 use the same. Not sure about one that is just 4500. You might have to use the 4500 case. If not, there are other places online that sell them, but they're all around £125. (I hope I'm right that UK still uses pounds. Its been awhile since I checked).

 

[Maxheadroom]

i might just try swapping the mobos, would i have to do a fresh install of 7?

 

[Petey7]

I'm not really sure. If the hardware is different enough, you might run into major problems with drivers. Doing a fresh install would prevent such a problem.

 

[Maxheadroom]

its a no go unfotunatley just looking at the back of the laptops togeather i can see the mobo must be different , ahh well
thanks for the help

 

[Petey7]

Thats a shame. Are you sure the keyboards aren't interchangeable? Since both appear to be dead anyways, might as well take the HDDs out of both and play around a bit. You might find an easy fix in the process.

 

[Maxheadroom]

thanks mate, yeh i'll prob end up having a play not much else i can do with them now

 

[ionbasa]

hmm...I had the exact same problem with an Acer Extensa. Here is what I did:
1) Power Off
2) take out battery and hold down power button for ~30-45sec.
3) re-seated the RAM
4) tried to power back on with battery in and on ac power
5) still had the same symtons
6) re-seated atheros wifi card
7) same thing
8)booted with only 1 Ram stick in
9) it started
I found ou that a 1GB ram stick was basicly dead and shorting out
as a side note I also replaced the thermal paste on my extensa becouse te processor was running to hot. about 80C at normal use, NOT GOOD, after that had no problem.
so try and boot up with only one RAM stick at a time, thats about the last thing I could think of.

 

[Maxheadroom]

thanks for the suggestion ionbasa but had no luck with that, what i did find though was the back of the fan intake was solidly blocked with crap so the heatsink couldnt of been working very well if at all!

 

[ionbasa]

well there was the probllem!! now it sounds like you fried your cpu/mobo

 

[housry23]

Maybe that is causing the BIOS to prevent the computer from booting. Today's BIOS's will shut the OS down if it get's too hot. It will also prevent the OS from loading if it starts too hot. Also, take the ram out of the one laptop and put it in the other. There is a chance that both RAM sticks are failing. I would also run a test on the Hard drive to make sure it is good. I clean my laptop's fan intakes at least once a month and clean everything else too. Get a can of compressed air and clean all the parts. Just be careful not to let the liquid get on the mobo. Before spending the cash on a mobo, make sure you test everything else first. Many people are quick to assume the mobo is fried and many times it is something else like a CPU, or PSU, but many times it is something as simple as it needs cleaned. You could also take the hard drive out of the other laptop and put it in this one and try to boot with your Windows 7 Cd in. See if you can format it and install Windows on it. If so, then it was your hard drive that was bad.