Tech support?

lonestoner916 · Post by **lonestoner916** » Mon Jan 03, 2011 4:37 pm

My laptop, a five year old hp, has recently been giving me the black screen of death when I turn it on and only seems to work lately when it wants to. I'm fairly certain this is from my having been plugging it in to an ancient powerstrip that's about half full of spilled kitty litter. My power cord started to make this weird hissing sound and a google search led me to the answer about using the shitty surge protector. I switched to a newer, litter free one, but for the past several days it takes a lot of screwing with the laptop to get the screen to come on. Once it does the computer works just fine but as soon as I turn it off I'm back to square one again. I'm thinking it's the power cord and/or the battery and that if I replace both of them I should be okay for a while at least but I don't want to waste the dough if my laptop has something terminal and is slowly dying. Anyone ever run into this problem or hear of someone else running into it and if so, how do I make it all better?

lonestoner916 · Post by **lonestoner916** » Mon Jan 03, 2011 5:06 pm

And YES, I did try and research the problem, but the answers I've found all vary greatly, some say battery, others say motherboard, etc...

Post by **Elderberry** » Mon Jan 03, 2011 5:10 pm

I had a similar problem a few weeks back. If by "black screen of death" you mean that your monitor just doesn't turn on. My rule though, is if it's over three years old, it gets replaced, working or not. Fortunately I was able to remote into the machine and transfer all my data.

Of course, after the laptop was off for a week or so, and I needed some additional information off the hard drive, it worked like a charm. But i'd never trust it again.

Your machine is five years old...don't waste any more time or money on it, get a new one.

JK

Kinetik V · Post by **Kinetik V** » Mon Jan 03, 2011 6:26 pm

My laptop died about 2 months ago. I took the thing apart, cleaned it, reassembled it and put on new thermal tape and did other things and brought it back to life. Cost me $30 for the thermal tape I wanted, all said and done $50 was all I was going to spend on it. If it cost more I was going to say enough and go buy a netbook for $300 or spring for a laptop for $500 and be done with it. A 5 year old laptop is not like a 5 year old car where pouring a little bit of cash into repairs makes it a worthwhile investment. Jkisha's right...if you have a laptop that you can't find a power adapter dirt cheap for...and I do mean dirt cheap...even if money is very tight it may be time to go buy something newer.

Post by **Elderberry** » Mon Jan 03, 2011 7:11 pm

lonestoner916 wrote:And YES, I did try and research the problem, but the answers I've found all vary greatly, some say battery, others say motherboard, etc...

You never did explain the symptoms...does it start up, but the screen is black? Is td just dead, period? It's pretty hard to diagnose here without knowing the exact symptoms.

JK

lonestoner916 · Post by **lonestoner916** » Mon Jan 03, 2011 7:37 pm

Yes, sorry, it starts up but then you get the black screen, sometimes is sounds like it's trying to run other times it will just turn on and off. I know this thing is an antique but I've grown fond of it. I could probably replace it with a newer used laptop but I'd rather wait until I can afford that brand new MacBook Air I've been coveting and I don't have the scratch yet.

junglesmacks · Post by **junglesmacks** » Tue Jan 04, 2011 5:45 am

Being as that laptop motherboards (especially 5 year old ones) have the video card, power supply and everything else basically integrated into it, the long and short answer is that yes.. it's your motherboard.

Go with the advice given before to just get a new one. Replacing that one will cost you $300, and a brand new with warranty beautiful one will run you $600.

Word of advice: Pick up a nice model brand new with full factory warranty from an Ebay powerseller that is an authorized dealer. There are a bunch. You can pick up an HP 2.4 ghz dual core Intel i3/500 gb hd/4 gb ram/1 gig video/17" bright view monitor for $600 brand new. You can't get much better than that..

http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-HP-G72-B66US-i3 ... 20b608bd16

tamarakay · Post by **tamarakay** » Tue Jan 04, 2011 6:00 am

you can try hooking it up to an external monitor, to see if it is the screen or the board, but i'd follow everyone's advice and get something cheapy until you get the $ saved up for the macbook. Also, get your pics, music, etc off this one and onto an external storage device.