HP Comaq NC6220 Bank screen and Freezing

I got my younger brother and sister each an HP NC6220 about 18 months ago. Recently both of them started either freezing(my brother and sister say that they will freeze), or having a bank screen when you turn them on. I've took a look at one of them and 3 out of 4 times that I press the power button the screen will be blank and I'll have to do a 4 sec shutdown. If I'm lucky it will show the HP logo and boot up correctly.

I've done HDD and MEM tests but they appear to be 100%.

Does anyone know what I need to do to fix this?

Thanks in advance.

Oh, and the warranties have expired...

 

BIOS problems maybe? Try updating the BIOS to the latest version.

 

Good idea, I'll try that ASAP

 

So what happened?

 

I was just going to try to flash the bios but the screen is blank. After a few on and off's if finally showed the HP logo but just stayed there and didn't start loading windows, i pressed F10(for the bios) and it said entering setup, but never entered it.

If I can get it to boot into windows I'll flash the bios.

1 hour later EDIT: I was able to get into windows and flashed the bios. Restarted it and the screen was blank yet again. It seems like after it has been on and you turn it off, it doesn't want to go back on again until 20+ minutes have elapsed...

 

Maybe your partion is corrupt... try reinstalling windows.. but first open up the laptop and check whether all the cables are properly connected and the CPU is properly seated etc..

 

I took it completely apart and cleaned the motherboard and everything else. After I had reassembled it, I pressed the power button and it booted just fine. The time had been reset btw. After windows was fully loaded, I had it shut down. Then I pressed the power button and it booted up into windows just fine again. I repeated this process a third time and it booted into windows just fine.
The fourth time, it failed The screen stayed blank. So I rebooted it and got the HP logo but that's as far as it got.

This all happened 2 days ago. Today I press the power button and it boots just fine. But I'm sure if i reboot it again it will very likely have a black screen or get stuck at the bios again.

So... Any ideas, Sean? BTW I reinstall XP a week or 2 ago when it first started having these problems, but that didn't help.

 

Sounds like some piece of hardware is failing, or a cold solder joint.

If your lucky, the HDD is the trouble, just remove it and see if that fixes the trouble.

 

That is the video card for sure, the solder is cracked.

If you have nvidia graphics, probably 8400m it's a known fault.
Lots of HP notebooks have your problem, they need BGA reworking or a new motherboard.

I hope you have warranty, if not still call up and ask. Maybe they have extended free warranty for this issue because they knew about it when they sold the notebook.

If you get nowhere with warranty, and dont want to pay for a new motherboard then you can try BGA reflowing yourself.

Check youtube for guides, lots of people show how to fix those bad nvidia GPUs. Most vids are about HP because HP has bad cooling so the chips die faster.

So get a heat gun from a hardware store (used to strip paint). Set it to 300C, heat up the GPU for a few mins.

If that solves the prob, you have to keep the GPU cool for the rest of it's life.

If you get a new motherboard, you still have to keep it cool.
Otherwise you will have the same poblem.

So change the thermal paste, do the copper shim mod.
Turn the fan speed up.
Undervolt the GPU. watch your GPU temps to make sure it stays really cool.

 

If I remember correctly the NC6220 is a Pentium M notebook with a GMA915 IGP, I doubt it was affected by the Nvidia problem

 

ok, ignore my post then.

 

Tried that, no luck:/

Pentium M 1.73GHz-GMA9??

+1 Anyway

 

It could be your HDD is failing. I was having a similar problem with my old HP Omnibook XE3-GF about 2 weeks ago, the HP logo screen would show up then after a while some gibberish on the screen. If I rebooted several times I could eventually get Windows to come up. Last week the HDD died completely. I know its the HDD because a substitute HDD from another computer boots fine.

Strange that two computers would develop the same problem at the same time though.

EDIT: Just saw your last post, please ignore me too

 

lol, thanks anyway, I've taken out the HDD, booted it and it still did a black screen.

 

try this:
Take out the battery and power cord.
Hold the power button for 1 min.

Put in battery and power cord, test it.

Also can you re-seat the ram?

And how's your CMOS battery?

 

I'll try that later today. Not sure about the cmos battery...

BTW I've already bought a new laptop for my brother, so If I can get this fixed I'll put it up on ebay, if not I'll still put it up for parts or repair.