Notebook Won't Boot Properly.. Help!

A few months ago my friend stepped on the corner LCD hinge of my notebook - it broke the hinge off and severed the integrated webcam wire, but other than that there was no hardware damage. In lieu of replacing the computer, he and I decided to open it up and take a look at it to see what had to be done to replace the hinge. When we put the chassis back together, the computer would not boot. When I push the power button, the button's light turns on, the LED clock and hard drive activity indicator (at the front of the computer) turn on, but nothing else. After turning it on and off several times, the processor, video card, and fan will turn on half the time. The display never turns on. This is the same when the notebook is on battery power, AC power with the battery in, and AC power when the battery is out. All components produce heat like normal. Which piece of hardware could be malfunctioning? Motherboard? Or something else? Or is it possible that a screw is loose and that is disrupting the power flow?

My system configuration is:

Self-built barebones Clevo M560A (Sager NP-5320) 15.4" LCD chassis
Intel Pentium M 740, 1.73 ghz, 533 mhz FSB, 2 MB L2 cache
ATI Mobility Radeon x700, 256 MB Dedicated video memory
2 GB (2x 1GB) Crucial DDR2 RAM
80 GB 7200 RPM Seagate Barracuda HD
Intel PRO Wireless 2915
Internal bluetooth card
DVD-RW Drive
Windows XP Professional
Built in May 2006

No hardware changes have been made since it was built, and I have never had any problem with it before!

 

does it turn off by itself? or the Lcd just wont turn on?

 

You must not have connected something properly. When rebuilding, you must make sure that everything is connected properly and you do not have any extra screws or dangling wires. It really could be anything, but if it worked before you took it apart, then you and your friend did not hook everything back up properly.

Try reseating the graphics card and reconnecting the lcd cables, if no lcd image comes up.

K-TRON

 

We did not take any components out - we only removed the heatsinks on the processor and video card, because the ends of the heatsinks adjacent to the fan were dusty and needed to be cleaned. The entire bottom plastic case of the chassis was opened up partially to remove the piece of metal hinge that broke off on the inside - could the motherboard simply have been moved out of place when we unscrewed everything?

The LCD does not turn on at all. The hard drive always turns on according to the HD activity LED on the notebook. The fan turns on most of the time, a bit weakly. The processor and video card only turn on every few attempts. The power button light and LED lights all stay on, and do not turn off automatically. Also, the built-in CD player (which is usable when the system is shut off) still works fine.

 

if your laptop has a video outpu, VGA port, you can test to see of the graphics card works on and lcd or crt monitor.

If no output is displayed when you press the fn + fxx button, which has thr little tv on it, then their is a problem with the internals of your laptop.

If an image comes up on the external monitor, then there is either something wrong with the screen, or something which connects to the screen has been yanked out.

K-TRON

 

Problem solved. I had 2 sticks of RAM in my laptop, and I just removed one of them. The notebook booted properly with only one stick of RAM in.