Did my laptop die?

Hi all

I have an old gateway mx3417 which I love because of its size and weight compared to my 6860fx, and that I used for some school work.

Recently I lent it to a friend who wanted to check it out and was interested in buying it from me. After a couple of days, he gave me the laptop back and said he left it on as he went to have something to eat, and when he came back it wouldn't wake up.

So I have the laptop right here and here's what happens:

I press the power button, laptop powers up, optical drive starts up, power light comes on, fans start up, BUT, bios doesn't come on the screen, no apparent hdd activity.

The lcd doesn't even seem to light up as I power it on.


I tried removing the battery and putting it back in case it was a nasty no recovery sleep mode from xp, but no luck.

Any ideas?

I don't think there's any certified gateway repair shop here in costa rica that I know of, so it's up to me to fix it I believe, hopefully with your help and guidance


Thanks in advance!

 

I am pretty bad with this kinda stuff, but it sounds like it could be either a Hard drive or motherboard issue.

 

I would ask your "friend" what in the world they did to the laptop. As least a good friend will own up and give you a starting point about where to go from here about repairs.

It seems like your BIOS isnt posting. You can try a BIOS recovery, that might help (or even flash a new BIOS to take out the worry of trying to recover)

 

Try removing separate sticks of ram... see if it posts

 

Even without a hard drive it would still display POST/Splash Screen. Try to reset the CMOS also (there is probably a jumper on the inside). You can also start removing devices (Hard drive, Optical Drive, WIFI Card, Touchpad, anything except the absolute necessities) to see if you can get it to POST.

Agreed. How long did he leave it (He will probably lie about this one)? What was it sitting on when he left it? Was anything running in the background or was it idling?

If it was left on a bed or couch or something soft that would block the vents, the laptop may have severly overheated.

 

You should ask your friend if he tried updating your bios and failed.

 

Thanks for the replies guys

According to him, he just set it on a table (hard surface), nothing running in the laptop except maybe firefox and autocad and just left it on as he went for lunch. He says at most he was away for 20-30 mins

I'm gonna try the tips mentioned and report back!

Thanks again guys

 

No luck with removing ram sticks...

And does anybody have any experience disassembling these laptops? It looks like I have to remove the display panel in order to reach a couple of screws but I have no idea how to take it off the hinges.

 

Could be the cmos battery on the board. I'd replace that and see if you at least get a post.

 

With the 6860fx, you can get the panel disassembled by running a credit card around inside the split in the panel, not sure about the other laptop. From there you can probably see how to do it, but taking the panel apart is something you might want to do anyway because you might have a loose video cable in there.

 

Thanks for the replies again

I've had no luck so far getting the panel off.... I'll post a pic later of the hinges and see if anyone has disassembled something similar.

 

Might be a stupid question, but did you try hard powering down the laptop? It might be stuck in sleep/hibernation mode, and that's why when you try to start it up again, you get the blank screen without anything else seeming to work. When you get it to that blank screen, hold down the power button for 10 seconds for a hard power down and try powering it on again.

 

What other method do you think he's using to turn off the laptop?

 

On my laptops, I've had similar problems when they've come out of sleep mode, I can see that the screen is on, but nothing else seems to be responding (ie, keyboard, hd). If I press the power button normally, it just tries to send it back to sleep mode and the screen goes off again. However if I do a hard power down by holding down the power button for about 10 seconds, it shuts the laptop down, and takes it out of any crashed sleep/hibernation mode it might be in. I didn't read anywhere in his posts that he has tried this yet and it was just a suggestion.

 

Uhm this might be a stupid question...But are you sure the LCDs not dead?

I'm asking because it sounds like nothings coming on screen, like you can't see anything.

 

It's very possible, especially if there's not even a backlight on the screen.

 

Hi guys, thanks again for the replies and sorry it took me so long to respond. I've been pretty busy with school.

Enoch rood: yes, that's the first thing I tried. I even removed the battery, put it back in, and nada.

JustinNotJason: It could be dead, I don't know. In any case I tried with an external monitor attached. Monitor read "disconnected" while the cable was disconnected (obviously), as soon as I plugged it into the VGA port on the laptop (laptop powered off), monitor read "No video input", and as soon as I powered the laptop on, monitor read "disconnected" again so I'm not sure what's going on with the lappy's video.

I'm attaching a pic of the right side hinge as I've no idea how to disassemble it.