Gateway 7324 GZ LAPTOP

I'm having a problem with a Gateway 7324 GZ laptop. It's about 5 years old. Default Hardware, no upgrades. It decided one day to stop working.

Power button is pressed, Blue LED on power button illuminates.

No display on screen.

You can hear fans running if you put laptop up to your ear.

There's also hot air blowing out from the rear vents.

There is a blue LED and orange LED lit up on the front of the laptop when connected to the AC charger. There is also a little LED blue plug symbol lit up near the keyboard which indicates it is connected to AC charger.

It doesn't sound like anything is running besides the fan inside but laptops are very quiet so I'm not sure....

The laptop will stay on indefinitely but there is no display.
CAPS lock, scroll lock, and num lock do not illuminate when pressed.

I've tried a power reset.

Removed laptop main battery, Removed AC charger, took apart laptop and removed small CMOS battery. Held the power button down for 1 minute, replaced the CMOS BATTERY, replaced the laptops main battery, plugged it back in. Powered it on, no success.

I've also tried taking out RAM and re-seating it.

Any suggestions?

 

I imagine you don't get the audio of windows meaning it may not actually be getting past bios. It could be the HDD, ram (see you somewhat tried that, CPU or any other add on to the main board. Then again it could be the main boaard itself is dead. Unlike desktops with easily replacable, and obtainable, replacements laptops are a hard one to fix without being there. Even then it sometimes is just time for a replacement..........

 

It doesn't POST. And I don't think it's the hard drive because hard drive wouldn't affect display, you would still see an output disk boot error. From what I've read and such it sounds like the motherboard because it isn't even going through the POST ( POWER ON SELF TEST) and you don't see any BIOS SPLASH SCREENS either. I'll have to just recommend replacing the laptop completely to this person because the worst possible scenario has occurred, unfortunately.....dead motherboard.... But yet again I'm not completely sure. Does anyone have anything I can try for this laptop before I give it back?

 

Well no sound I assume means the drives do not spin up? If the drive(s) are not spinning up it could be they are locked and the power drain shuts the system down well before even video post. Again probably not but you asked for something to try and I have seen this happen before.

Even with bad memory the drives should spin up. As mentioned the worst could have occured and it is time for a replacement.

Edit; same can be true for a CD/DVD drive locking the system durring power check.................

 

I wasn't going to reply to this considering I know that particular laptop is long in the tooth by about 8 years. ( I bought one new and still use it) But I saw the post date and I have experienced that problem for the last few years, on my laptop the backlight goes out, seems to be a fault in the connector I think down around the hinge. I just wiggle it back and forth a little till the display shows and voila. When you boot up do you see the hard drive light working? Also your laptop supports an external monitor, you can plug into it and use the function key as marked in blue and F4 to switch to it or maybe it's stuck on external, that might bring display back. If it's the first problem you should still be able to see the unlit display vaguely if you shine some light on it. If the HDD light on the right side of the light cluster is not lit up. that can't be good, try accessing bios with F2 or try accessing safe mode F8 or the boot menu F10. Let me know if you tried these as I am curious. I haven't found a cure for the backlight going out as it's easier to just wiggle the display a little. Makes me smile when I think if a thief steals this thing, lol