Fixing up a Gateway P-7811FX

Hello all. I'm new to this forum and in need of some help. I have the above laptop that a friend gave me. This machine had an unfortunate run-in with one of his dogs and it got yanked off of a counter top and hit the floor, causing the screen shatter and his hard drive to become scratched. So, he gives it to me cause he was getting a new one for x-mas anyways. So I get a new screen, got some ICD7 and completely gutted the thing to clean and repair it. I did not see any obvious signs of breakage on the motherboard. So here I am at the final stages of repair. I power it on, no hard drive installed. I plan on trying to boot Ubuntu 10.10 from a usb. Well, the screen does not light up or display anything as far as I can tell. Everything seems to work fine, no beeps or anything, but I find it odd that both the GPU and CPU fans spin up, but the GPU immediately cuts off. Any ideas?

And thanks in advance for the help!

-Lokgolo

 

So you get to bios but no GUI etc?

 

Did you try an external screen?

 

No I have not tried an external screen. I don't own one, but I can get my hands on one. @TanWare, no I don't even get to the bios. As far as I could tell, the screen doesn't display anything. I checked the connections, checked the screen, checked the inverter...everything seemed to be in order. I'll see if I can get a monitor and plug it up.

**Edit
Is it possible that the inverter could be gone? Or I received a defective screen? Or even the cable to the screen and motherboard? I have this sinking feeling that it's something wrong with the mother board, and I don't have $500 to shell out for a new motherboard.

 

I would try as MH advised to see if the system will work with an external monitor............

 

So yeah, don't seem to get a picture with an external monitor, nor does my flash drive light up when plugged in.

 

Not a good sign. Since you also have power boards and other things in their that can go wrong you could end up spending a fortune trying to get it running again.

 

Yeah, I'm already pretty peeved that I've put closed to $150 in it for the screen, replacement keys, thermal paste, and all out of my x-mas money. I mean, it powers on, but the GPU fan immediately cuts back off. Force shut down works, but the screen definitely doesn't have power. Would you suggest getting a professional opinion or looking into a completely new mother board?

 

I just read this post -- P-6860 FX Powers up but no display -- and wondered if I removed the battery if that could help? Maybe it was jostled out of place during the fall?

 

didn't you remove it to change out the display, if not it is worth a try especially being it is free to try.......

 

Haha no. When I got it, I completely gutted the thing down to the MB to clean out any dust apply ICD7 to the GPU and the memory chips associated with the GPU, and to make sure I didn't find any other signs of damage.

As for the battery, no I didn't remove it. It's tucked up under where the WiFi module sits and I had no reason to take it out.

I did realize I goofed in checking to see if I can get the post to come up on an external monitor. I never hit FN+F4 to switch the display and I'll be trying that after I get home from work.

 

Ah, the CMOS battery. It is worth a try.

FN+F4 for me with HDMI switches the display only with the nVidia drivers loaded at windows level. With VGA I get a dual display. Fom BIOS it seems to do nothing. This is with a 25" 1080P display.............

 

Well, in that case I can try to put my hard drive from my Sony in and see if it boots. I won't get anywhere with the one that was in there. But if I do that, will Win 7 ask me to reactivate?

 

Yeah CMOS battery didn't work. FN+F4 didn't work. Is the BIOS supposed to show up on an external monitor just by plugging one in?

E: still can't get the motherboard to recognize the USB with Ubuntu on any of the usb ports. So much for using Linux to boot to do a system check, much less get a picture.

 

FN+F4 does not work on bios or low level, ie OS menu. If you are at user login GUI you are set for FN+F4 with the nVidia drivers loaded.

 

Well, I can't get the original hard drive to boot. I believe it got scratched in the fall as it's self test I ran in Ubuntu on my Sony states it has 7 bad sectors. I tried doing a start up repair to no avail. But when I put the hard disk in the Gateway it does spin up, so I'll try putting the hard drive from my Sony into it and see if it boots.

 

So my fully functional HD does not boot in the Gateway. Spins up though, so idk. I gave it a good 1-2 minutes to boot to Windows, but there was no activity beyond it spinning up. So I believe the MB took damage or the BIOS chipset did....

 

Darn..I wish you had written before you spent all the money and time. We could have suggested to pull drive, attach the external monitor and then check for board damage.

You may have bent pins, TIM problem or other problem after doing the tear down...all I can suggest is to recheck everything you disconnected to check for the dumb mistakes I always end up doing

Let us know..

 

Ok, i'll tear it down again. And yeah, 20-20 hindsight here, haha. I should have asked my friend questions before I even bought anything and tried to test it. My main concern is maybe it's something with the GPU as the fan starts up and then stops. Or the BIOS since nothing would boot.

 

Ok so I currently have the thing in pieces again. I haven't seen anything missing, cracked, damaged, etc. I'm not sure what else I should be looking for....

 

Just my opinion, but either your bios is bad, or the solder on your gpu is bad.

 

There was that one guy on ebay that charged 125 for repair flat, see if he is still around............

 

Yeah I saw that...wasn't sure if that was worth it. I'm reluctant to send it off to a third party even if it is busted. It's gotta be either the bios or the gpu like JRSOR said. I don't get a picture at all. No light, no anything, and the gpu fan doesn't continue to run like the cpu does.

edit: I've been looking into just buying a whole new motherboard just to avoid the whole problem. I saw JRSOR's post on going from the 7811 to the 7908 motherboard and thought that sounded like a great idea! Just need to wait for tax returns and the like.

 

That is another option so long as you are 100$ sure the power board or other boards and cables etc are 100%...........

 

This has been a great upgrade. I switched back to running win 7 at the moment. Mine says 7901, and it's running everything else from the 7811, cpu, memory, fans everything. Glad to have my 7811/7901 back!

 

Well, there are only two other boards that are part of the main housing. There's the board that houses the adapter input, modem input, and the two usb ports. That's at the back left. Then there's the mouse pad. Those are the only two boards that I'm aware of other than the MB.

My friend has told me he's willing to chip in $200 to help me repair it since he gave it to me not knowing it was this busted. He has plenty of money to throw around since his dad is a lead engineer at a nuclear facility.

 

Would he cover the initial cost to buy, then pay back your $200 with your return? $400 to your door, took about 5-7 days to receive.

 

No, I think I would cover the entire cost and he pay me in cash to put back into my account or give me the cash and then I buy. Not sure how he wants to do it, but I still have to wait for my tax returns to get the other $200

 

Ok I'm back and posting from a fully functioning 7811. I purchased the motherboard that JRSOR had mentioned in a thread. When I got it, I immediately noticed how easily the new board fit into the case. I had to practically force the old one in to match up with the powerboard connector, which now leads me to believe that it was warped from falling/heat. Anyways, I'm still getting all the necessary drives together but everything seems to be a-ok! No excessive heat coming out of the vents like my friend had said happened before. Thank you ICD 7!

 

Which one did you buy?

 

Listen everyone. I have passed many test of gpu and cpu. In my oppinion both are good. Why? Try to connect laptop to a external monitor (via vga in my case)...works good without freezing! Try this solution and write down here your conclusions.

 

Not sure what you mean but;

When you have dual monitors with nvidia it will change the ramdac speeds and probably keep you from going between the 2d-3d timing issues less often if at all. also forcing vga means a D/A conversion for the VGA port where with the included display there is no D/A needed.......