Gateway Z5WTC cracked screen, no video on VGA or HDMI. Worth saving?

I was given a Gateway Z5WTC as non working. The battery charges and when I turn it on the CPU fan runs steadily and quietly. The power light is on steady and another blue LED next to it is blinking dimly and rapidly.

By shining a light on the screen I can see it's damaged. The backlight doesn't come on I've connected it to a monitor with the VGA and the HDMI ports but get no video out either. Pressing Fn and the keys that appear to be for switching video output do nothing. I assume Fn has to be held while pressing the other key.

There's no hard drive installed but it does have RAM.

Do you think the mainboard was also damaged by whatever did the screen?

Worth repairing or strip it for parts?

 

Your said: "There's no hard drive installed but it does have RAM?" How are you accessing the Operating System?

 

I didn't say anything about the OS. Without a hard drive a functional laptop will still be able to put the splash logo, POST info, and BIOS setup on the display, or out to an external display.

I need to open it up to see if something is jarred loose or broken, other than the display. It's likely not worth replacing both the display *and* the mainboard.

 

OK Let us know what you find when you open it up. Another thought...If the cmos battery is dead then maybe the splash logo, POST info, and BIOS setup won't work.

 

There's rust spots and some unidentifiable residue on the housing of the optical drive. Looks like some other evidence of liquid intrusion. I'd say it's dead, Jim. That's the first part I pulled. Shined a light in the drive hole and things don't look good. Under the keyboard didn't show signs of something being dumped on it.

Probably knocked over a big coffee, splooshed it under and up from below then while attempting to mop up knocked it off a desk or dropped it. I took the RAM out, the battery is good. Dunno if it's worth the effort to dismantle it enough to get the CPU. The WiFi and Bluetooth (if it has it) cards might be OK and the keyboard looks fine.

It *was* a rather nice laptop (except for the 1366x768 LCD) but for some reason only has one RAM slot with an empty space for the second next to it. If the display wasn't trashed I'd look for a replacement board from a model that used the same case but with both RAM slots.

Eh, it was a freebie so maybe I can get a few $ on eBay and let someone else go to the work of parting it out. NV570P09u is the configuration of this Z5WTC.