f13.net

So my girlfriend's laptop seems to have given up the ghost. When turned on all the proper LEDs light up, but nothing appears on the screen, and after a few seconds it just reboots. It'll power-cycle endlessly until you unplug it. I did as much cleaning as I could with compressed air, but it didn't help. Neither did removing each stick of RAM in turn. Fortunately, the hard drive is removable and standard SATA so I was able to save all her data but I'm guessing the rest is a lost cause - the thing is something like four years old.

I know the right answer is "buy a new one" but I was wondering if there was any chance of a professional being able to perform a miracle operation. It would just be easier for her not to have to go through the hassle of setting up a new machine; she needs it for school and isn't particularly computer literate. I have no experience with professional techies so I don't know if they would do anything beyond what I've done already, or even be significantly less expensive than a cheap-but-functional Dell or something. Any input?

Sometimes you can frankenbox something back together if you have another laptop of the same basic model, but generally laptops are built to wear out and not worth repairing.  Check Craigslist, etc., and maybe you can find one for cheap that you can just drop the drive into and have it work.

--Dave

Typically that sort of behavior means fried motherboard, I'm afraid.  The labor to strip the thing apart to replace that would be obnoxious.

Shop around and see if there's a laptop repair place. They will generally charge around $100 for just the diagnosis, and if the motherboard needs replacing, it'll take upwards of a week and a half and around $300 more or so. If the laptop was fairly new, without any warranty and expensive enough, its worth it. Sometimes its just a loose connecting ribbon, but most of the time its a fried capacitor or some such that does require the entire motherboard to be replaced.

Laptops are generally not repairable - too much work and parts are too specific.

For laptops, get the longest warranty you can which isn't obnoxiously costly.  If it's in warranty, abuse the hell out of it for any problems.  If it's out of warranty, get your next laptop once you've eliminated all the simple things it could be.

More than likely you'll spend more trying to fix the thing than what it's worth, and a significant proportion of what it would cost to replace it wholesale, which you'll be doing soon enough anyways if it's four years old.  Budget for replacing it every 3-4 years.

Test with a different AC adapter.  Had something similiar, decided to shell out 20 bucks to cover all my bases - viola, issue resolved.

I'd give an external monitor a shot as well.

You also haven't said what model of laptop we are dealing with.  One thing about Dell is that all of their tech service manuals are available online.  If you can you can identify the bad part, the step by step instructions for replacing that part are available.

Also try removing the battery and booting, if you haven't already.