Reply With QuoteWhat kind of problems?
Computer repair
Anyone know of a decent, IE cheap, laptop computer repair person in the mid-cities area?
What kind of problems?
Yea, like Sammm said, sometimes the parts costs/availability can be prohibitive to repairing a laptop. IE system boards or displays
'06 RSX Type-S NBP
Yeah, that's the reason I threw in the "Cheap" comment. I dont want to sink a lot of $$$ into swapping parts when A, it's 3 years old and B, you can go to Fry's and get something for not much more than you would spend dropping in parts.
The problem is as follows, and I'll try to not to be long winded for those that seem to be challenged with having to read more than 3 sentences. :)
A while back, my wife was using the laptop, Dell Inspiron 1521 running Vista 32 bit if that matters. Screen went black. unresponsive. She powered it off via the power button. Restarted it and it worked fine. A few nights ago I was using it and same thing, black screen and unresponsive. I shut it down by presing the power button. Restarted and worked fine for two hours until I shut it down normally. Yesterday, I got home and wanted to log on and read about the Style bar versus Roll bar topic. Everything started up fine. got to my desktop and had just opened IE when I got the black screen. Powered it off and tried to restart it. This time, nothing but black screen. Power button is on, things seem to be humming internally etc. Screen is just black. I cant see any type of faint image in the screen or anything. I've read some online about about the LCD inverter, backlight etc.
I brought it with me to work today and tried it with my monitor here plugged in and nothing at all.
Sounds like a faulty power supply, but it could be mother board related too.
A friend at work had an HP where the video card is integrated into the motherboard. Searching google indicates that the video card is a common problem and needs an entire MB replacement. My guess is that it is something similar, especially since an external monitor doesnt work also.
The the video is on the system board. If the LCD and the external both don't work, the system board is shot.
You say it's 3 yrs old. How close to 3 yrs? Get the service tag and plug it in at http://support.dell.com/support/topi...=us&l=en&s=gen and see if it is still under warranty. If so, get on the phone and get it replaced.
'06 RSX Type-S NBP
No longer under warranty unfortunately. I was kind of fearful it was the video board which means the whole mobo has to be replaced. I'd like to find someone that can verify for sure before I make a decision on getting a new board or just going to get a new laptop. I hate swapping parts, and also would rather spend the $$$ on Miata suspension parts :)Originally Posted by Nexus Flux
You may be correct about it being a power problem, but not the power supply. I've been researching and have found that the CMOS coin cell battery on these will fail and cause my issue. Something about part of the memory being tied into that battery. The newer Dells apparently are a pain to remove the battery because you have to practically disasemble the thing. On mine, Inspiron 1521 all you do is turn it over and remove a trap door. But, the battery is incased in some type of blue plastic shrink wrap and so far I have been unable to locate what the battery is or where to find one.
Yep, I have the manual and it is a breeze to change it out. I was hoping I could find one local but could never find an actual part number etc for it.
had similar issues with a latitude. one thing to check is when you plug in the external monitor, the laptop should come up on the screen. yours did not i see, but you may want to toggle the screen with the Fn-F8 crt/lcd button to make sure. my screen was bad and apparently its a common problem with that era dell. i was still under warranty so it was replaced onsite. unfortunately two days after the warranty the motherboard died
95 r white
No joy with the CMOS battery replacement
Try breaking it down and going after everything with compressed air - fans, intakes, heat sinks, exhausts, boards etc. The initial symptoms sound like a common problem we had with work issued laptops where the on board graphics chips weren't being cooled properly after being contaminated with dust, skin, hair, etc. over the period of a year or more. Initial service call was to open it up and clean everything, second call was to put on a better heat sink, third call was to replace system board.
Chris
I'll give it a shot. Thanks.
sounds like you need to swap the lcd to me. just because the external monitor didn't power up doesn't mean anything. laptops can be finicky when trying to connect to an external monitor. usually you have to set up the monitor the first time you connect to it, otherwise the computer doesn't know what to do with it as it is not the primary. since you lcd is off you wouldn't have seen the prompts to set up the monitor.
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