My Laptop Needs Repair, Advice Appreciated

Hello, I would be most interested in any advice regarding laptop repair for an old laptop:

Dell Inspiron 7500, Running Windows 2000
6GB Hard Drive, 512MB Memory

Symptoms: Sometimes the screen becomes garbled upon startup. It will start normally if given a (gentle) thump and then restarted. The screen is also ghosting a bit (meaning, the mouse dragged over an image might take away some color temporarily).

Other Symptoms: it can no longer connect to the office intranet. For example, whenever I do a "save as" function, the system hangs because it does not dragdown the appropriate usual targets (i.e. usual places it offers as options for where to save things). The laptop can surf the web, and can do all its other software tasks. The tech support staff at the office have kind of given up on it and so a repair shop appears the next step.

Advice needed: What's the best way to approach a repair shop about this? Any lessons you have learned from repair shops?

Note: I have not been able to convince my employer to replace this antique and it's easier to get them to pay for repairs than to replace it. Repair in the meantime looks like the path to take, unfortunately. Thanks very much, I appreciate the time folks spend on this rather elementary question!

 

Has anyone just reinstalled Windows? It sounds like you have to do that for sure. I can't tell from what you say but it sounds like your LCD might need to be replaced.

 

That's an old laptop. Things you might need to do is reinstall windows... and clean the fan if it's old laptop. I'd buy a new one to replace it than repair.

 

Thanks for the advice. Sounds like two votes to reinstall Windows before giving up the ship.

There's a short circuit in there somewhere (evidenced by the need to give the computer a bump to get it working again), so maybe trying to figure out whether the short is causing the Windows glitch or the windows glitch is causing the screen failure is kind of like chicken and the egg, doesn't matter which came first I guess. Well next stop is the repair shop then, thanks again.

 

Sabotage the thing and force your employer to replace it. Sounds like you've been working on an outdated notebook for a while and putting up with it's shortcomings. You deserve better... I think.

 

How I do so agree with you M17! Repairing a laptop this old is straight out of a Dilbert cartoon but sometimes offices work that way. Cruel world ain't it.

 

Yeah man... just make sure you cut the green wire first... or is it the red one... ****!!!!!!!

 

Say thanks everyone for the earlier information.

Tech support at my employer now say: the video card needs replacing. For an Inspiron 7500 with 512MB of memory, what is a good card to buy to replace the bad one? I know there are quite a lot of video cards out there with different features.

Many thanks once again.
Glennski

 

If its for business, Im assuming it doesn't have an dedicated video card. business notebooks usually have an integrated one and if thats the case I don't think it can be replaced since its probably part of the motherboard. I'd check that out first to see if its integrated or not. you can get a decent laptop for around 500 and itll probably cost 100-200 to fix the problem so it might be bettre just to replace it.

 

I had an issue similar to yours. I found that my motherboard connector to the LCD had worked loose. Cleaned and reseated it, been working well for over a year now.

 

Amazing story here, this all has a happy ending. After being told by various techies (not on this board but elsewhere) that the video card is soldered to the motherboard and that only a complete motherboard replacement would do it... I opened the thing up myself.

The video card is connected with two screws. I took it out, got the part number, ordered one from Ambrey International, cost incl shipping is $28, put the part in and... PROBLEM SOLVED!!!!

The strange software/not connecting problem actually went away on its own before the new card went in. However, the appearance of two problems at once threw everybody off the track, including me.

The OTHER happy ending to the story is: the boss approved a new laptop finally! Thanks people for all your advice!!!