MT6728 - Fans and Lights, nothing else

Ok, I have a coworkers MT6728 in pieces on my kitchen table. After trying, and failing, to get Gateway to take it back for repair she passed it to me to see if I could do anything before she tossed it (warranty expired yesterday, she was trying to get them to take it last week).

Immediately it powered up and worked fine. However when I tried to power it up later, nada. Every time since then as well.

The AC adapter IS charging the battery, since I left it plugged in over night and now it the onboard display shows full charge (it will also -sorta- power on off the battery or just AC power).

Here's what it does. You hit the power button, the lights come on, it hits the DVD-ROM for a moment, and that's it. No BIOS post, no hard drive activity, nada. Plugged in an external monitor and tried to switch output to that, nothing.

So I stripped it down to bare minimums. Removed the hard disk, DVD-ROM, memory... pretty much everything. Still no joy, put one memory stick in, nothing. Changed slots, still nothing. Did the same with the other stick to no avail. All this time the CPU doesn't appear to be powering up, since the heatpipe is cool to the touch after 5-10 minutes of "ON".

I suspect the motherboard is toast.

Anyone think of anything I missed?

 

Did she try a bad BIOS flash? It seems like the machine is looking for the BIOS and there isnt one.

But the slagged motherboard is more likely the issue. Best bet is to get a new one. If the warrenty has gone out and Gateway are being ****'s about it then the motherboard will cost almost as much as a new unit (guessing here, but that seems to be pretty standard)

 

No, she's not the kind to try and flash the BIOS.

Gateway actually called her ignorant on the phone and hung up on her a few times, which pretty much lead everyone at the office to vow to never buy a gateway or acer (who now, apparently, owns them).

I'm pretty confident the board died. The CPU seems fine, I don't have anything else to check it in, but there doesn't appear to be any scoring and the TIM is good. The laptop -did- detect that it wasn't installed by turning itself off (yeah, I know, not a good idea to power up without a CPU. But hell, it's dead already and I'd tried everything else). It's very peculiar.

Probably just have her pick up a USB2 SATA hard disk adapter and make her a 500GB external drive. Should come in useful at work, so at least some good will come from this steaming pile.

 

Well ignorant used correctly isnt an insult... it simply means you dont know something. Though i somehow doubt thats how it was meant.

I would go up the ladder to have that service rep, reprimanded or fired (talking to a person that way...especially about computers... is just uncalled for)

As to the BIOS flash... i only mentioned it because that seems to be a default for alot of tech reps that have nothing else to suggest. HP is really bad about it. They would just link me to a file and say "run this and the problem will go away" Just blindly flashing BIOS can cause alot of head ache and i tend to stay away from them unless proven secure.

If it is really the mother board then yeah just make her an external HD and then tell her to get the weakest stated and lowest RAM computer she can and save money by using the old bits and bobs to upgrade a "lesser model" notebook for cheap